EXAPOD 


&&&  M.  Watch 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 
HEXAPOD  STORIES 


Van  was  ready  to  enjoy  a  New  Year's  dinner. 


LITTLE  GATEWAYS  TO  SCIENCE 


HEXAPOD  STORIES 


BY 
EDITH  M.  PATCH 


WITH    ILLUSTRATIONS    BY 

ROBERT  J.  SIM 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 
1930 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 

First  Impression,  May,  1920 
Second  Impression,  June,  1920 
Third  Impression,  August,  1921 
Fourth  Impression,  June,  1922 
Fifth  Impression,  June,  1923 
Sixth  Impression,  March,  1926 
Seventh  Impression,  June,  1928 
Eighth  Impression,  March,  1930 


THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLT  PRESS  PUBLICATIONS 

ARE  PUBLISHED  BT 
LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 

IN  ASSOCIATION  WITH 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


URL; 


TO 

ALICE  PATCH 


TO  INTRODUCE 
TWELVE  LITTLE  HEXAPODS 

THE  Hexapods  are  funny  folk  who  have  six 
feet.  That  is  they  have  six  when  they  are  grown 
up,  though  some  of  the  children  have  none  at  all, 
and  some  have  as  many  as  twenty-two.  You  can 
tell  from  this  that  they  are  strange  people,  and 
you  may  call  them  fairies  if  you  like! 

They  have  wings, — the  grown-up  ones  do,- 
wonderful  wings  of  many  shapes  and  colors. 
Luna's  wings  are  green, —  pale,  pale  green,— 
and  very  lovely,  with  a  purple  border  on  them. 
Perhaps  there  is  nothing  more  beautiful  in  the 
world  than  Luna's  wings.  When  Van  flies,  you 
can  see  the  yellow  edge  of  her  brown  wings;  and 
when  she  alights — hesto!  presto!  you  can  see 
nothing  at  all;  for  she  disappears  from  sight  even 
though  she  is  near  enough  to  touch.  Carol  wears 
her  wings  neatly  folded  like  a  fan,  except  when 
she  is  using  them.  And  Gryl,  the  little  black 
minstrel  —  oh,  Gryl  fiddles  with  his  wings. 

They  do  queer  things  that  we  could  not  do  if 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

we  tried.  Old  Bumble  sleeps  for  more  than  half  a 
year,  and  then  wakes,  thinking  nothing  of  it  at 
all,  as  if  that  were  the  most  natural  way  to  take 
a  nap.  Keti  starts  to  build  himself  a  log  cabin 
before  he  is  a  day  old;  and  finishes  it,  too,  in  time, 
with  no  one  to  show  him  how.  And  Cecid  be- 
witches the  willow  with  a  magic  no  one  else  can 
learn. 

Yes,  you  may  call  the  Hexapods  fairies,  if  you 
like;  but  you  must  never,  never  forget  that  they 
are  every  bit  as  real  and  true  as  you  are,  even  if 
they  are  so  very  different. 

They  are  not  far  away,  not  farther  than  the 
flowers  or  the  trees  or  the  nearest  brook.  And 
there  are  so  many  millions  of  them  that  every 
child  in  the  world  might  have  some  for  pets  and 
they  would  never  be  missed. 

And  let  me  tell  you  this,  for  this  is  very  impor- 
tant: although  Hexapods  are  common  and  easy 
to  find,  there  is  not  one  among  them  all  that 
does  not  have  a  story  about  his  life  so  strange 
and  interesting  that  he  is  worth  watching  just 
to  find  out  what  his  story  is. 


INTRODUCTION 


Are  you  pleased  to  know  that,  whether  you  are 
in  the  country  or  in  the  city,  and  whether  it  is 
summer  or  winter,  you  are  living  right  in  the 
midst  of  Hexapod  Land,  where  you  have  these 
most  wonderful  fairies  for  next-door  neighbors  ? 

EDITH   M.  PATCH. 


I.     VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY,  WHO  WAS 

WAKENED   BY  A  JANUARY   THAW     .    .  1 

II.     OLD   BUMBLE 17 

III.  THE    STRANGE    HOUSE    OF    CECID    CIDO 

DOMY 35 

IV.  POLY,  THE   EASTER   BUTTERFLY 47 

V.     JUMPING   JACK 67 

VI.     NATA,  THE   NYMPH 80 

VII.     LAMPY'S   FOURTH   0'  JULY 95 

VIII.     CAROL 107 

IX.     ANN   GUSTFS   CIRCUS 118 

X.     GRYL,  THE   LITTLE   BLACK   MINSTREL.    .  129 

XL     LUNA'S   THANKSGIVING 141 

XII.     KETI  ABBOT,   THE  LITTLEST  CHRISTMAS 

GUEST  .  155 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Van  was  ready  to  enjoy  a  New  Year's  Dinner  .  .  Frontispiece 

Van  now  looked  like  a  ragged  bit  of  bark 5 

Each  meal  lasted  several  days 11 

There  they  hung  on  their  silk  pegs 14 

Old  Bumble's  long  nap  18 

How  Bumble's  nest  looked  inside 22 

Old  Bumble  and  a  son  and  daughter  bee 24 

Hum  and  Buzz  were  ready  to  start  out  on  their  journey,  and 

Flyaway  was  going  too 28 

The  strange  house  of  Cecid  Cido  Domy 34 

How  Cecid' s  house  would  look  if  it  were  cut  in  two  ....  38 
She  was  not  much  to  look  at  when  she  went  to  sleep  .  .  .  .41 

Then  she  changed  into  a  little  midget 44 

Papil  spun  a  peg  and  a  belt  and  changed  into  a  chrysalis,  just  as 

Poly  had  done 48 

When  they  become  butterflies  they  drink  nectar  from  flowers .  .  51 

//  you  find  a  caterpillar  like  Poly,  she  can  teach  you  a  great  deal .  54 
When  you  stop  to  think  about  it,  you  remember  that  a  bitter-sweet 

vine  does  not  have  thorns 66 

Jack  and  Jill 68 

Jack's  foreign  cousins 73 

This  is  the  foam  that  stiffens  into  a  blanket  to  cover  her  eggs .  .  78 

Nata  was  a  hunter 84 

Nat  was  Nata's  mate 88 

Well — She  came  out  of  Nata's  bathing  suit 93 

Oho!  Here  was  Lampy 97 

Like  a  flock  of  dancing  stars  the  Will-o'-the-Wisps  are  taking 

flight 101 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

And  every  one  of  them  carried  a  candle 104 

It  was  noontide  of  the  hottest  day  of  the  summer 107 

Now  Carol  had  two  little  fans 109 

Perhaps  you  thought  she  was  a  butterfly 112 

Before  she  climbed  up  the  buttercup  stem  she  put  on  her  last 

dress 119 

Ann  Gusti  wiggled  her  toes 123 

The  thinnest  living  skeleton 125 

A  beetle  who  had  a  queer  spring 127 

There  he  sat,  the  happy  little  fellow  • 130 

Gryl  and  Taffy ....  133 

Lucy  and  Gryl  Cricket 137 

Luna  had  been  a  caterpillar  once  upon  a  time,  and  a  pretty  one  142 

The  moonbeams  could  find  nothing  lovelier  than  Luna  .  .  .  146 

She  would  fly  in  the  moonlight 150 

Later  there  must  be  cocoons  wrapped  in  fallen  leaves .  .  .  .153 

Keti  lived  all  alone  in  a  tiny  log  cabin 156 

He  travelled  on  the  under  side  of  the  branch  and  let  his  home 

hang  down  like  a  bag 160 

Keti's  cousins 163 

And  fly  forth  to  seek  out  a  wingless  mate 167 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

HEXAPOD  STORIES 


HEXAPOD  STORIES 


i 

VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

WHO  WAS  WAKENED  BY  A  JANUARY  THAW 

VAN  was  having  a  happy  time  making  her  New 
Year's  calls. 

She  had  crept  out  of  bed  about  noon,  for  there 
was  no  cold  wind  blowing,  and  the  sun  had 
thrown  its  warm  rays  against  the  loose  piece  of 
bark  under  which  she  was  sleeping.  These  warm 
rays  had  wakened  her.  That  was  a  pleasant  way 
of  starting  January,  to  have  the  sun  knock  at  her 
door  with  its  own  sort  of "  Happy  New  Year! " 

Other  pleasant  things  happened,  too.  To  begin 
with,  Van  was  thirsty;  and  there  is  much  to  enjoy 
in  being  hungry  and  thirsty  if  there  is  food  and 
drink  near  by.  She  had  had  nothing  to  eat  dur- 
ing November  or  December,  as  it  had  been  too 

i 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

cold  for  two  months  to  do  anything  but  sleep; 
and  she  was  ready  now  to  enjoy  a  New  Year's 
dinner. 

So  she  must  have  been  glad  when  she  had  some 
invitations  to  "come  and  have  a  feast/'  Of 
course  these  were  not  written  in  notes,  and  put 
into  envelopes,  and  stamped,  and  brought  her 
by  Uncle  Sam's  post-man.  Nor  were  they  brought 
her  by  messenger  boys  who  said  in  words,  "  You 
are  invited  to  dine  at  Mrs.  Appleby's."  Those 
would  have  been  silly  ways,  for  Van  was  a  butter- 
fly, and  what  did  she  know  about  written  or 
spoken  invitations  or  dinner-bells? 

But  there  was  a  way  for  all  that  to  let  her  know 
the  table  was  spread  for  her.  And  after  all,  what 
better  \vay,  when  folk  ( either  boys  or  butterflies ) 
have  been  without  food  until  they  are  hungry, 
than  to  be  tempted  by  good  smells? 

The  first  invitation  that  the  air  brought  Van 
was  from  an  old  apple  tree  that  lived  near  the 
edge  of  the  woods.  My,  my!  what  a  good-smelling 
one  it  was!  The  apples  had  frozen  on  the  ground, 
and  now  they  had  thawed  and  were  soft,  and  the 

2 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

juice  was  like  cider.  Oh,  oh!  what  a  feast  for  a 
thirsty  butterfly! 

Other  guests  had  been  before  her.  Brother 
Rabbit  had  eaten  there  more  than  once.  Mr. 
Fieldmouse  had  nibbled  up  half  an  apple  and  left 
a  pile  of  crumbs  in  its  place.  And  the  birds? 
There  was  one  that  very  minute  pecking  with  its 
thick  short  bill  at  an  apple  that  had  caught  in  the 
branches.  So  bird  and  beast  and  butterfly  were 
all  made  happy  by  the  New  Year's  gift  of  the  old 
apple  tree. 

The  second  invitation  the  air  brought  Van  was 
from  a  maple  tree  that  lived  down  the  same  lane 
not  far  away.  This  was  such  a  good  one  that  Van 
could  hardly  get  there  fast  enough.  She  flut- 
tered her  wings  in  a  hurry  to  get  a  quick  start, 
and  then  sailed  for  a  little  way.  Then  she  flut- 
tered her  wings  again  as  if  she  wanted  to  get  there 
before  it  was  too  late.  And  no  wonder!  For  there 
was  a  broken  branch  on  the  maple  and  a  little 
icicle  where  some  sap  had  dripped  out  and  had 
frozen,  and  now  the  icicle  was  melting.  Maple 
syrup!  Oh!  oh!  oh! 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

The  third  invitation  that  the  air  brought  to 
Van  was — But  we  shall  never  know  because, 
just  as  she  was  starting  to  her  third  feast,  a  boy 
and  a  girl  came  racing  down  the  lane. 

"Oh,  see!"  they  called;  "a  butterfly!  A  big 
beauty!  Just  think!  A  butterfly  on  New  Year's 
Day!  Let's  take  it  home  to  show! " 

So  they  ran  after  Van,  who  was  spreading  her 
brown  wings  with  yellow  borders  for  a  slow  sail. 

Oho !  catch  Van?  Why  they  could  n't  even  see 
her!  What  had  been  a  large  butterfly,  with  wide 
showy  wings,  a  minute  before,  now  looked  like  a 
ragged  bit  of  bark  on  a  tree  near  by.  Van  had 
hidden.  And  she  was  almost  near  enough  to 
touch,  though  perhaps  a  little  too  high.  She  had 
hidden  right  in  plain  sight.  And  all  she  had  done 
was  sit  on  the  bark  of  the  tree  and  fold  her  wings 
above  her  back  and  keep  still.  Catch  Van?  Why 
Van  could  fool  a  bird  in  a  game  of  hide-and-seek ! 

By  the  time  the  children  gave  up  the  hunt,  the 
sun  was  under  a  cloud  and  the  wind  felt  chilly. 
So  Van  did  not  have  any  more  feasting  that  day, 
or  make  any  more  New  Year's  calls.  She  was 

4 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 


near  her  shelter  of  loose  bark  and  crept  up  under 

cover  out  of  the  wind.  She  had  had  a  good  time. 

She  had  had  cider 

and  maple-sap 

enough  to  last  her 

until  the  next  thaw 

spell  -  -  be  it  one 

week  or  two,  or  one 

month,  or  two,  or 

even  three.    Time 

was  all  alike  to  her 

when  the  weather  was 

cold — short  or  long,  it 

was  the  same!     She  just 

slept !       You   may    ask   the 

wisest  man  you  know  why  it 

did  Van  no  harm  when  the 

weather  was  cold  as  zero.   If  he 

is  very  wise,  indeed,  he  will  tell 

you,   "I  do  not  know  why." 

But  our  not  knowing  why  made  no  difference 
to  Van.  She  did  live  through  the  cold  winter  in 
the  north,  with  no  shelter  but  a  loose  bit  of  bark, 

5 


Van  now  looked  like  a 
ragged  bit  of  bark. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

just  as  her  grandmother  had  lived  one  winter  in 
a  hollow  tree,  and  her  great-great-grandmother 
had  lived  under  the  roof  of  an  old  empty  shed. 

As  spring  came  on,  Van  had  invitations  from 
the  pussy  willow,  where  she  met  some  pretty  flies 
with  stripes  on  their  bodies.  She  called,  too,  on 
the  trailing  arbutus,  where  she  met  Old  Bumble 
more  than  once ;  for  they  both  drank  from  those 
sweet  pink  cups  and  carried  pollen  from  flower 
to  flower. 

Some  time  in  May  Van  found  that  she  could 
not  spend  all  her  time  in  calling  on  flowers,  how- 
ever much  she  liked  their  nectar,  and  however 
much  they  needed  to  have  their  pollen  carried  for 
them.  So  she  hunted  for  a  willow  tree,  and  made 
a  little  ring  around  one  of  its  twigs.  This  ring 
was  set  with  fifty  jewels,  the  very  best  she  had  to 
offer  to  the  world.  Of  course,  these  jewels  were 
her  eggs. 

In  about  two  weeks  they  began  to  hatch,  and 
Sister  Essa  was  the  very  first  of  them  all  to  bite 
around  the  edge  of  her  egg-shell,  until  the  top 
lifted  like  a  little  lid  and  out  she  came,  looking 

6 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

much  too  long  to  be  curled  up  in  the  shell  she 
crept  out  of. 

Essa  did  not  go  away  from  her  brother  and 
sister  caterpillars.  When  they  were  all  hatched, 
they  crept  off  together  and  lay  in  a  row  side  by 
side,  with  their  heads  at  the  edge  of  the  leaf. 
There  they  had  their  breakfast,  which  it  took 
them  several  days  to  eat. 

And  what  do  you  suppose  it  was  ?  No,  their 
mother  did  not  bring  them  cider  from  old  soft 
apples,  or  syrup  from  broken  maple  twigs,  or 
nectar  from  flowers.  She  was  not  like  Old  Bumble, 
who  fed  her  babies  every  day.  Van  did  not  bring 
her  fifty  children  one  single  thing  to  eat.  Sister 
Essa  was  hungry,  too ;  and  so  were  the  rest  of 
the  family.  And  here  they  were  left  on  a  willow 
branch,  where  there  was  nothing  at  all  but  leaves 
-food  their  mother  never  could  have  eaten  with 
her  long  tongue,  if  she  had  uncoiled  it  and  tried. 

But  we  need  n't  worry  about  those  babies.  In 
less  than  the  flick  of  a  minute  Sister  Essa  had 
nibbled  a  tiny  green  bite  out  of  the  top  of  the 
willow  leaf,  nodding  her  little  head  over  it  as  her 

7 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

jaws  opened  and  shut  as  if  there  were  nothing 
better  to  be  had  for  a  breakfast.  All  her  brothers 
and  sisters  were  nodding  their  heads  just  the 
same  way,  and  while  they  were  about  it,  they 
nibbled  off  the  whole  top  of  the  leaf  just  as  if  it 
were  a  green  layer  cake  and  they  wanted  only  the 
shiny  frosting.  Before  breakfast  was  over,  Sister 
Essa  led  them  to  another  leaf,  where  they  lay 
side  by  side  in  a  row  as  before,  and  ate  until  their 
skins  were  too  tight  to  hold  another  bit  of  shiny 
green  frosting. 

That  was  a  sign  that  their  breakfast  was  over; 
so  they  spun  a  thin  mat  with  silk  which  they 
spilled  out  of  a  little  tube  near  their  lower  lips, 
and  took  a  nap  on  the  mat. 

The  first  day  they  rested  quietly,  but  the  sec- 
ond day  they  acted  as  if  they  were  having  bad 
dreams  and  tossed  their  heads  a  great  deal.  In 
fact  Sister  Essa  jerked  so  hard  at  last  that  her 
little  skull  came  off  like  an  empty  shell.  By  that 
time  she  was  wide-awake,  and  crept  out  of  her 
tight  skin  through  the  collar-hole  the  skull  left 
when  it  tumbled  off.  Before  she  had  time  to  turn 

8 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

around,  all  her  brothers  and  sisters  were  jerking 
their  skulls  off,  too,  and  creeping  out  of  their 
skins  through  the  collar-hole. 

Something  funny  had  happened  to  them  and 
they  never  looked  the  same  again.  They  now  had 
new  heads,  with  bigger  jaws  and  fine  new  stretchy 
skins. 

After  that  nap  that  had  had  such  a  queer  end, 
they  were  hungry;  so  they  went  off  to  some  new 
leaves  (this  time  one  was  not  big  enough  to  hold 
them  all)  and  lay  in  rows  and  ate  their  luncheon. 
It  was  so  good  they  did  not  stop  for  nearly  a 
week.  When  their  luncheon  was  over  at  last, 
they  spun  another  thin  silk  mat  and  had  another 
nap.  They  woke  in  about  two  days,  jerking  their 
skulls  off  again,  and  crept  through  the  collar- 
hole  in  their  skins  just  as  they  had  before.  They 
now  had  still  bigger  heads,  and  skins  that  were 
stretchier  than  ever. 

Well,  that  was  the  way  Sister  Essa  went  on 
doing,  until  she  had  had  her  dinner  and  another 
luncheon  and  her  supper.  Each  meal  lasted  sev- 
eral days,  with  a  day  or  two  for  a  nap  in  between. 

9 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Every  time  she  wakened,  she  pushed  and  jerked 
inside  her  old  skin,  until  her  skull  fell  off  like  an 
empty  nut-shell;  and  when  she  crept  out  of  the 
collar-hole  she  looked  different  from  the  way  she 
looked  when  she  went  to  sleep. 

By  the  time  she  was  eating  her  supper,  her 
skin  was  a  soft  black  color,  with  little  white 
specks  like  a  "  pepper-and-salt "  suit.  Down  the 
middle  of  her  back  was  a  row  of  pretty  red  spots, 
and  growing  all  over  her  sides  were  black  spines 
with  pointed  branches.  She  was  now  two  inches 
long  and  a  fine-looking  caterpillar — after  one 
got  used  to  seeing  her. 

As  her  brothers  and  sisters  had  all  had  the 
same  sort  of  time  growing  that  she  had  had,  they 
were  fine-looking,  too,  and  so  big  that  the  fifty 
of  them  together  made  the  tip  of  the  willow 
branch  hang  down.  They  ate  more  for  this  meal 
than  for  any  other,  and  they  did  not  nibble  just 
the  shiny  frosting  as  they  did  at  breakfast  when 
they  were  tiny  —  they  gobbled  up  all  the  flat 
green  cakes  on  the  branch.  This  would  have 
been  a  bad  thing  for  a  little  tree  which  needed  all 

10 


Each  meal  lusted  several  days. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

its  leaves  to  grow  with.  Of  course,  if  they  had 
been  on  a  small  tree,  it  would  have  been  better 
to  take  them  off.  But  this  was  a  big,  big  one, 
forty  years  old,  and  it  was  growing  wild  near  a 
brook,  with  no  gardener  to  trim  off  some  of  its 
branches;  and  what  leaves  Essa  and  the  others 
ate  could  be  spared  as  well  as  not.  Of  course, 
their  supper  must  be  a  hearty  one,  for  it  had  to 
last  them  until  they  were  butterflies,  like  Van, 
with  a  long  tongue  to  uncoil  when  calling  on  the 
flowers  to  sip  nectar  and  to  carry  pollen. 

You  never  would  think,  to  look  at  Essa,  that 
she  would  ever  fly;  for  there  she  sat  clinging  to 
the  branch  with  ten  of  her  feet  and  drawing  the 
edge  of  the  leaf  down  to  her  mouth  with  her 
other  six  feet,  and  she  did  n't  have  a  sign  of 
wings  anywhere  on  her  back. 

Ah,  but  Essa  could  do  several  things  you 
would  never  think  she  could!  She  had  never 
done  them  before  —  why  should  she  now?  You 
might  not  think  she  could  creep  head  first  down 
the  trunk  of  the  tree,  and  take  a  walk,  as  fast  as 
she  could  hurry,  along  the  ground,  until  she 

12 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

came  to  an  old  fence;  and  climb  the  fence,  and 
spin  a  silk  peg  on  the  lower  edge  of  a  board, 
and  fasten  her  hind-legs  to  the  silk  peg,  and  let 
go  with  all  her  other  legs,  and  hang  there  head- 
down  until  her  skull  split  and  her  skin  ripped 
down  the  back  seam! 

You  would  n't  know  how  Essa  could  do  that, 
would  you?  And  if  you  ask  the  wisest  man  you 
see  how  a  caterpillar  can  do  wonderful  things 
like  that  just  once  in  her  life,  without  learning 
or  without  any  one  to  show  her  about  making 
a  silk  peg,  maybe  he  will  tell  you  he  does  n't 
know,  either. 

But  our  not  knowing  how  she  can  do  it  made 
no  difference  to  Essa.  That  is  just  what  she  did 
when  she  had  finished  her  supper;  and  while  she 
was  about  it,  she  changed  into  a  chrysalis,  which 
looked  no  more  like  a  butterfly  than  it  did  like 
a  caterpillar. 

Well,  there  they  hung,  Essa  and  her  forty-nine 
funny  brother  and  sister  chrysalids,  for  about 
ten  days;  and  none  of  them  knew  anything  about 
Lampy's  fireworks  on  the  Fourth  o'  July.  Soon 

13 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 


after  that  Essa  broke  her  chrysalis  case,  and 
tumbled  out  head  first.  She  did  n't  tumble  far, 
for  her  feet  caught  hold  of  the  empty  case,  and 
she  hung  there 
with  her  soft  lit- 
tle wings  down, 
until  they  grew 
big  and  stopped 
throbbing.  She 
clung  with  four 

feet;    but     yOU  There  they  hung  on 

,  their  silk  pegs. 

must  not  think 
she  had  no  more  feet  than  a  cat  or  a  dog,  for  her 
first  pair  were  folded  against  her  breast  and 
covered  up  by  her  pretty  brown  fur. 

Some  people  said  Essa's  wings  were  purple, 
and  some  said  they  were  brown.  I  don't  know 
what  you  would  think  about  their  color.  But  all 
agreed  that  the  border  was  pale  yellow,  and  that 
next  the  yellow  on  the  upper  side  was  a  dark 
band  with  lovely  pale  blue  spots  on  it.  And 
everybody  who  saw  her  said  that  she  was  a  very 
beautiful  butterfly  when  she  spread  her  wings 

14 


VAN,  THE  SLEEPY  BUTTERFLY 

open,  and  that,  when  she  folded  them  shut  above 
her  back,  she  looked  like  a  piece  of  bark. 

Essa  flew  about  and  made  calls  on  the  flowers, 
for  there  was  flower  nectar  instead  of  frozen 
apple-cider  in  July.  After  a  time  she  made  a  ring 
about  the  twig  of  a  tree  all  set  with  her  egg- 
jewels.  I  have  forgotten  whether  she  chose  a 
willow  or  an  elm;  but  it  made  no  difference 
which,  for  her  daughter  Opie,  when  she  hatched, 
could  eat  either  one.  If  it  had  been  an  oak,  Opie 
would  have  starved  to  death;  but  of  course  Essa 
would  not  have  left  her  eggs  on  an  oak  or  a  pine 
tree. 

Well,  Opie  and  her  brother  and  sister  cater- 
pillars ate  and  napped  and  grew,  and  changed 
into  chrysalids  and  then  into  butterflies,  just  as 
their  mother  and  their  uncles  and  aunts  had 
done. 

But  by  this  time  it  was  the  fall  of  the  year, 
and  Opie  found  her  life  much  more  like  her  grand- 
mother's than  it  was  like  her  mother's;  for  Essa 
had  been  a  summer  butterfly  and  Opie,  like  Van, 
was  a  winter  one.  So  she  flew  about  and  called 

15 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

on  the  fall  flowers,  and  when  the  days  grew  cold, 
she  found  a  shelter  as  her  grandmother  Van  had 
done,  and  went  to  sleep,  clinging  with  four  feet 
to  the  roof  of  her  winter  bedroom  and  folding 
the  other  two  close  to  her  breast. 

There  she  rested  all  the  winter  long,  except 
when  the  days  were  warm  enough  to  thaw  her 
out.  For  be  it  one  month  or  three  or  even  four, 
time  was  all  alike  to  her  when  the  weather  was 
cold  —  short  or  long,  it  was  all  the  same.  Opie 
just  slept! 


II 

OLD  BUMBLE 

CANDLEMAS  DAY  was  bright  and  fair. 

Perhaps  the  ground-hog  came  out  of  his  hole 
and  was  scared  by  his  shadow  and  \vent  back  to 
bed  again.  I  do  not  know. 

But  I  know  Old  Bumble  did  n't  come  out  of 
her  hole  that  day.  Her  legs  \vere  all  cramped  up 
with  the  cold,  and  even  her  pretty  black  and 
yellow  fur  could  n't  keep  her  warm. 

You  see,  she  had  chosen  to  make  her  winter 
bedroom  in  a  little  cave  on  the  north  side  of  a 
dry  bank,  and  the  sunshine  did  not  touch  it. 
This  did  very  well  last  August  when  she  \vent  to 
bed.  If  she  had  been  in  a  sunny  place  then,  it 
might  have  been  too  hot  for  her.  It  did  n't  take 
much  to  disturb  her  when  she  first  went  to  sleep. 
If  anything  had  got  into  her  bedroom  then  and 
touched  her,  she  would  have  shaken  herself  and 
gone  away  and  found  or  made  a  new  place.  In 

17 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

August  she  was  what  is  called  ' ( a  very  light 
sleeper/'  and  could  n't  bear  to  be  touched. 

In  winter  she  was  different.  If  the  ground-hog 
had  pawed  her  cave  open  and  rolled  her  out  of 


Old  Bumble's  long  nap. 

bed  on  Candlemas  Day,  she  would  not  have 
known  anything  about  it! 

He  did  n't,  so  there  she  slept,  though  she  had 
been  napping  for  six  months  already  and  would 
very  likely  keep  at  it  for  t\vo  or  three  more. 
Is  n't  that  pretty  lazy  for  a  bee? 

She  had  not  done  one  bit  of  work  before  she 
went  to  bed,  either  —  that  is,  nothing  except  to 

18 


OLD   BUMBLE 


straighten  out  her  bedroom  a  little;  and  as  that 
was  hardly  more  than  a  hole  in  the  ground,  the 
process  did  not  take  her  long.  She  had  not  even 
hunted  for  her  own  dinner,  which  was  to  last  her 
all  winter.  She  helped  herself  to  some  fresh  honey 
that  her  older  sisters  had  put  into  a  honey-mug, 
and  drank  enough  to  fill  her  honey-sack,  and 
then  went  off  and  crept  into  bed.  Pretty  lazy 
for  a  bee,  was  n't  she? 

She  not  only  slept  through  Candlemas  Day, 
but  St.  Valentine's  Day  came,  with  its  pretty 
shower  of  cards  and  letters,  and  she  did  n't  wake 
up  then.  George  Washington's  birthday  found 
her  sleeping  still;  and  she  did  n't  even  dream 
while  people  were  putting  green  ribbons  in  their 
buttonholes  on  St.  Patrick's  Day. 

It  was  not,  I  think,  until  April  that  she  first 
roused  herself  and  poked  her  sleepy  head  out  of 
doors.  Perhaps  she  was  a  little  April  Fool,  for 
there  was  not  much  that  she  could  do  so  early  in 
the  spring. 

Maybe,  though,  she  could  find  something  to 
drink,  to  make  her  feel  better  after  her  nap  of 

19 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

many  months.  Yes,  the  cool  wind  brought  her 
a  sweet  smell  from  the  trailing  arbutus,  the  love- 
liest blossom  that  grows  in  the  spring.  For  Old 
Bumble  lived  in  a  land  where  people  had  not  yet 
robbed  the  woods  of  this  dear  flower,  which  used 
to  be  very  common  in  the  days  of  your  grand- 
fathers, and  is  getting  to  be  so  rare  that,  unless 
you  and  the  rest  of  us  are  careful,  there  will  not 
be  any  left  at  all  for  your  grandchildren  to  see. 

Well,  Old  Bumble  found  a  few  of  the  very 
earliest  pink  sprays  in  the  sunny  places,  and  she 
sang  a  happy  humming  song  as  she  sipped  at 
the  tiny  sweet  cups. 

She  did  not  stay  up  very  long  that  day,  for 
the  sun  soon  went  under  a  cloud  and  she  felt  like 
going  to  bed  again.  Then  for  a  week  or  so  it 
rained,  so  she  took  a  nap  until  the  weather  was 
fine.  After  that,  she  got  up  and  sipped  from  the 
different  spring  flowers  as  they  blossomed,  but 
still  slept  through  the  colder  days. 

Did  anyone  ever  tell  you  that  a  bee  is  a  busy 
little  thing? 

Well,  you  see  how  Old  Bumble  spent  the  greater 

20 


OLD   BUMBLE 


part  of  the  year  just  dozing  the  time  away.  But 
wait  and  see  what  she  did  the  rest  of  her  days! 

As  soon  as  the  weather  was  warm  enough  she 
started  out  on  a  hunting  trip.  She  buzzed  slowly 
along  near  the  ground,  but  this  time  it  was  n't 
flowers  she  was  after.  She  was  house-hunting. 
Just  bedrooms  no  longer  suited  her.  She  was 
done  with  sleeping  day  after  day.  What  she 
wanted  now  was  a  nursery.  She  must  find  a 
place  where  she  could  bring  up  a  family  of 
children. 

So  here  and  there,  and  there  and  here,  she 
flew,  singing  her  slow  hunting  song  as  she  went. 
Now  and  then  she  stopped  and  peeped  into  a 
hole,  to  see  if  she  liked  it;  and  if  it  was  not  good 
enough  for  her  home,  she  came  out  and  hunted 
still  farther. 

At  last  she  found  a  place  that  would  do  nicely 
for  her  nursery.  It  was  a  home  a  field-mouse  had 
lived  in  once  upon  a  time,  and  a  field-mouse  has 
very  good  taste  about  underground  houses.  Any 
way,  Old  Bumble  liked  the  same  kind. 

Of  course  it  needed  tidying  up  a  bit  after  being 

21 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

empty  so  long.  So  she  went  right  to  house- 
cleaning  as  if  she  knew  all  about  it.  She  had 
never  done  such  a  thing  in  her  life  before,  but 


Hot?  Bumble's  nest  looked  inside. 

she  was  not  so  stupid  that  she  had  to  be  shown 
how  to  do  everything.  She  had  a  way  of  getting 
things  right  the  first  time  she  tried.  She  had 
saved  her  strength  for  many  months,  and  now 
she  was  going  to  use  it. 

Her  nursery  must  be  just  exactly  right!  For 
one  thing,  it  should  be  dry;  and  this  empty 
mouse-hole  had  grown  damp.  So  she  worked 

22 


OLD   BUMBLE 


about  in  the  part  she  was  going  to  use,  and 
dried  it  out  with  the  warmth  of  her  body.  She 
found  the  softest  bits  the  mother  mouse  had  left 
there,  and  shook  them  up  with  her  jaws  and 
piled  them  in  a  heap.  Right  in  the  very  middle 
of  this  she  hollowed  out  a  little  room,  which  cov- 
ered her  up,  top  and  all,  except  a  hole  at  one  side 
which  she  kept  for  a  doorway  into  her  snug  little 
nursery. 

Then  off  she  flew  to  the  flowers  for  yellow  pol- 
len, which  she  gathered  and  packed  into  her  pol- 
len baskets  on  her  hind  legs.  She  brought  back 
her  load  and  put  a  lump  of  this  yellow  stuff, 
made  moist  and  sweet  with  honey,  right  on  the 
floor  of  her  nursery.  Next  she  brushed  some  wax 
off  her  body  and  made  a  little  nest  of  it  big 
enough  for  a  few  eggs. 

Before  night  came  on,  she  brushed  off  some 
more  wax,  and  this  she  made  into  a  honey-mug 
just  inside  her  doorway,  and  into  this  she  put 
what  honey  she  had  had  time  to  gather. 

But  she  must  not  fly  too  late,  for  her  eggs 
must  not  get  cold.  If  they  did,  it  would  take 

23 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

them  longer  to  hatch,  and  she  needed  her  daugh- 
ters to  help  her  as  soon  as  could  be.  She  sat  on 
the  little  wax  nest  to  keep  it  warm,  and  left  it 


Old  Bumble  and  a  son  and  daughter  bee. 

only  long  enough  to  fill  her  honey-mug,  so  that 
she  could  eat  from  it  in  the  night  or  on  stormy 
days.  For,  though  she  could  sleep  all  winter 
without  eating,  she  needed  food  now  to  give  her 
strength. 

In  a  few  days  her  eggs  hatched,  and  then  she 
was  busy  as  a  mother  robin  feeding  her  young. 
They  were  \vhite  little  babies  without  hair  or 

24 


OLD   BUMBLE 


legs,  and  you  never  could  guess  to  look  at  one 
that  it  would  some  day  be  a  black-and-yellow 
furry  bee.  You  could  not  take  a  peep  at  them, 
though,  as  you  can  at  little  birds,  because  their 
nest  had  a  tight  wax  cover,  and  the  nest  was  in 
the  nursery,  and  the  nursery  was  in  a  hole,  and 
the  hole  was  in  the  ground. 

Now,  how  could  Old  Bumble  feed  her  little  ones 
if  she  kept  them  shut  up  tight  in  bag  of  wax? 
Well,  for  part  of  their  food  they  ate  up  the  pol- 
len paste  she  kept  bringing  and  sticking  close 
against  their  nest. 

But  that  was  n't  all  they  had  to  eat.  Their 
mother  mixed  some  pollen  with  honey  until  it 
was  thin,  and  then  bit  a  hole  in  the  top  of  the 
nest  and  dropped  it  from  her  mouth.  Every  time 
she  did  this,  she  mended  with  wax  the  hole  she 
made,  for  her  babies  had  to  be  kept  shut  up 
tight. 

You  can  see  that,  with  getting  pollen  and 
nectar  from  the  flowers,  and  making  pollen-paste 
and  honey  for  the  children,  and  brushing  wax 
from  her  body  to  use  in  keeping  the  nest  and 

25 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

honey-mug  mended,  and  storing  honey  in  the 
honey-mug  for  nights  and  stormy  days,  the 
mother  bee  was  not  so  lazy  as  she  seemed  at 
first.  We  might  call  her  a  very  busy  Old  Bumble, 
indeed.  A  happy  one,  too,  humming  her  cheerful 
song  as  she  flew  about  on  her  out-door  errands. 

In  eleven  or  twelve  days  the  little  ones  stopped 
eating  and  each  one  spun  a  thin  cocoon  about 
herself,  for  she  must  still  be  covered  up.  This 
would  seem  to  give  their  mother  a  chance  to  rest. 
But  no!  It  only  meant  new  duties.  She  must 
clean  away  the  wax  and  pollen  from  the  cocoons, 
and  make  new  wax  nests  and  lay  more  eggs. 
Besides,  she  must  keep  the  cocoons  warm.  So 
she  spread  her  furry  body  out  as  big  as  she  could 
make  it  stretch,  like  a  mother  biddy  covering 
her  little  ones  under  her  feathers. 

After  about  two  weeks,  or  maybe  it  was  not 
quite  so  long,  the  young  bees  began  to  bite  holes 
in  the  caps  of  their  cocoons,  which  might  make 
you  think  of  chickens  pipping  their  shells.  They 
had  had  enough  of  being  shut  up.  They  were 
now  coming  out  into  the  world.  This  time  Old 

26 


OLD   BUMBLE 


Bumble  did  not  try  to  wax  them  in.  She  helped 
them  out.  She  might  well  be  glad  to  see  her 
daughters,  even  though  they  were  queer  and 
feeble  little  things.  Their  fur  was  as  wet  as  a 
chicken's  down  when  it  first  comes  out  of  the 
shell.  Their  legs  were  so  weak  they  could  hardly 
toddle  over  to  the  honey-mug  for  their  breakfast. 
After  they  had  eaten,  they  crept  back  and  cud- 
dled down  under  their  mother,  until  their  fur 
was  dry  and  fluffy  and  they  felt  strong. 

Only  a  few  days  more,  and  Old  Bumble's 
daughters  were  ready  to  help  her.  Good,  faith- 
ful, cheery  Old  Bumble  —  her  pretty  wings  had 
grown  tattered  and  torn  with  her  flying  for  food. 
Her  fur  coat,  that  was  so  fresh  and  fine,  was  now 
looking  ragged.  But  the  little  daughters  that 
snuggled  up  close  to  her  soon  began  to  do  her 
flying,  and  she  could  stay  at  home  and  keep 
house  and  rest  her  tired  wings. 

What  was  this  stir  and  bustle  about  the  nur- 
sery? Why,  Hum  and  Buzz  were  ready  to  start 
out  on  their  first  journey.  And  little  Flyaway 
was  going,  too.  They  looked  much  as  their 

27 


////         -^^--     r-iswr. 


//«;//  «;/</  Buzz  -cere  ready  to  start  out  on  their  journey 
and  Fli/mcfiy  tcY/.v  going  too. 


OLD   BUMBLE 


mother  did  when  she  left  her  bedroom,  only 
much,  much  smaller.  As  their  sisters  were  not 
quite  ready  yet  to  fly,  they  stayed  at  home  and 
helped  Hum  and  Buzz  and  Flyaway,  when  they 
came  back,  to  feed  the  baby  sisters  that  hatched 
from  the  eggs  Old  Bumble  laid  while  they  were 
spinning  their  cocoons. 

Now  that  the  mother  bee  did  not  have  to  fly 
out  okdoors  for  the  food,  she  laid  eggs  and  eggs 
and  still  more  eggs,  so  that  the  nursery  was  full 
of  baby  sisters  of  all  sizes,  from  the  egg  to  the 
cocoon  age.  As  soon  as  the  older  ones  came  out 
of  their  cocoons,  and  had  eaten  and  grown 
strong,  they  helped  care  for  the  growing  babies. 
If  they  did  not  fly  off  to  bring  home  fresh  food, 
they  stayed  with  their  mother  to  help  her  with 
the  nursery  work. 

So  the  happy,  busy  Old  Bumble  and  the 
daughters  spent  the  days,  doing  together  all  the 
hard  though  pleasant  tasks  of  bringing  up  a 
large  family  of  children.  Each  day  seemed  much 
like  another,  and  each  new  sister  that  crept  out 
of  her  cocoon  looked  like  her  oldest  sisters,  only 

29 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

some  were  larger.  Not  one  was  as  big  as  Old 
Bumble,  though.  Not  one ! 

Much  of  their  work  was  flying  from  flower  to 
flower  for  nectar  to  make  honey  out  of,  and  to 
gather  pollen  to  take  home  in  the  baskets  on 
their  legs.  And  while  they  were  doing  this  for 
themselves  and  their  younger  sisters,  they  car- 
ried pollen  from  flower  to  flower,  which  helped 
make  the  seeds  grow.  So  we  can  have  the  big 
red  clovers  and  many  other  flowers  they  visit,  so 
long  as  we  do  not  destroy  the  bumblebees. 

Time  passed  in  this  way  until  about  the  first 
of  August.  Then  something  different  came  to 
pass  in  this  wonderful  home.  Some  sisters  crept 
out  of  their  cocoons,  who  were  as  big  as  their 
mother -- every  bit  as  big  as  Old  Bumble!  And 
what  is  more,  about  the  same  time,  some  brother 
bees  crept  out  of  their  cocoons:  the  very  first 
brothers  that  Buzz  and  Hum  and  Flyaway  ever 
had  --  Old  Bumble's  very  first  sons! 

These  brothers  did  nothing  to  help  their  sisters 
who  had  tended  them  while  they  were  growing 
up.  These  sons  of  the  family  did  nothing  to  help 

30 


OLD   BUMBLE 


their  mother.  But  the  sisters  and  their  mother 
could  do  for  themselves  and  each  other,  so  it 
made  little  difference  to  them  what  the  gay 
bumblebee  lads  did  if  they  kept  out  of  the  way. 
And  they  did  this  for  the  most  part,  having  a 
fine  time  of  it,  flying  from  flower  to  flower,  eat- 
ing as  much  as  they  liked,  but  taking  nothing 
home  for  the  others. 

And  those  August  sisters,  those  big  ones  who 
looked  like  their  mother — what  did  they,  who 
were  strongest  of  all,  do  in  the  home  where  they 
had  grown  up  ?  Well,  they  sipped  at  the  honey- 
mugs  their  smaller,  older  sisters  had  filled;  and 
then,  when  they  were  strong,  they  sipped  again. 
Some  went  to  flowers,  too;  but  some  went  only 
to  the  mugs  in  the  nursery.  They  drank  long, 
until  their  honey-sacks  were  filled.  They  needed 
food  to  last  a  long,  long  time,  as  a  camel  needs 
water  enough  to  last  him  during  a  whole  trip 
across  the  desert.  It  was  their  good-bye  feast, 
and  when  it  was  done  they  went  out  through  the 
doorway  of  that  wonderful  nursery.  And  they 
never  came  back  again. 

31 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Never! 

They  flew  about  a  little  while,  and  then,  when 
they  were  ready,  they  crept  into  their  bedrooms, 
each  one  by  herself,  and  fell  into  their  August 
doze. 

Ah  me,  the  lazy  things!  There  was  clover  yet, 
and  many  a  sweet  flower  that  needed  its  pollen 
carried  for  it,  that  it  might  have  seeds.  The 
smaller  sisters,  not  nearly  so  strong,  were  still 
cheerfully  at  work,  though  their  wings  were  tat- 
tered and  torn  and  their  fine  fur  coats  were  ragged. 
And  these  so  fresh  and  big,  with  whole  wings  and 
new  coats,  were  n't  they  ashamed  to  sleep  the  sum- 
mer days  away? 

No,  they  were  not  ashamed.  It  was  not  for 
them  to  tear  their  wings  and  spoil  their  clothes. 
Not  yet!  They  had  nothing  to  do  in  the  world 
but  to  rest  and  save  their  strength.  That  is  what 
their  mother  did  the  year  before. 

So  we  will  not  call  them  lazy  any  more  even  if 
they  did  sleep  so  long.  They  rested  while  the  hot 
August  sun  shone  over  the  earth,  and  kept  it  all 
so  warm  that  they  did  not  sleep  soundly,  but 

32 


OLD  BUMBLE 


moved  now  and  then,  as  if  they  were  dozing 
before  a  fire  and  just  taking  naps. 

They  rested  while  the  red  and  yellow  leaves 
fell  to  the  ground  like  a  gay  and  beautiful  shower! 
They  rested  while  the  snow  followed  after  the 
leaves,  and  the  cold  made  them  numb  in  their 
beds. 

It  was  time  enough  to  be  up  and  doing  when 
Spring  called  again.  And  shall  we  hope  that 
when  they  wakened,  brave  and  beautiful  as  their 
mother  had  been  the  year  before — shall  we  hope 
that,  when  they  flew  low,  humming  their  happy 
hunting  song,  the  children  of  men  had  left  spring 
flowers  enough  for  the  children  of  Old  Bumble? 


The  strange  house  qfCecid  Cido  .Down/. 


Ill 

THE  STRANGE  HOUSE  OF 
CECID  CIDO  DOMY 

CECID  CIDO  DOMY  may  not  have  been  a  witch, 
though  she  had  a  name  that  sounded  as  if  she 
might  have  been  one;  and  if  she  did  not  bewitch 
that  willow  branch,  just  what  did  she  do  to  it? 
For,  to  begin  with,  the  branch  was  just  like  any 
of  the  others  on  the  willow;  and  by  the  time  Cecid 
Cido  Domy  got  through  with  it,  it  changed  into 
a  cone,  shaped  much  like  those  that  grow  on 
Christmas  tr.ees. 

In  fact,  it  changed  before  she  got  through  with 
it,  and  there  she  was  now  right  in  the  very  mid- 
dle of  the  very  middle  room.  For  the  cone  was  a 
house  with  many  rooms  in  it,  though  she  herself 
never  went  outside  the  middle  one  —  that  is, 
she  never  did  until  she  left  Willow  House  for 
good. 

There  were  strange  doings  in  Willow  House, 
too  —  much  to  interest  anyone,  with  guests  who 

35 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

came  by  day  and  by  night  and  visitors  who  lived 
there  just  as  if  it  was  their  house  instead  of  Ce- 
cid  Cido  Domy's. 

One  night  a  tiny  creature  came  and  found 
Willow  House  in  the  dark.  She  was  dressed  in 
soft  gray,  and  when  she  was  not  flying,  her  wings 
folded  down  about  her  something  like  a  long 
cape.  The  inner  ones  were  gray  as  ashes,  and 
the  outer  ones  were  darker  gray,  with  bright 
brown  upon  them  that  was  almost  red;  and  they 
all  had  gray  fringe  that  was  softer  and  prettier 
than  any  other  trimming  could  have  been.  She 
did  not  even  knock,  but  she  left  an  egg  in  one  of 
the  rooms,  and  her  daughter,  when  she  hatched 
out,  lived  right  there,  eating  all  the  food  she 
wanted  and  having  a  happy  time  in  the  shelter 
someone  else  had  made  ready,  with  no  trouble 
at  all  to  herself. 

Once  another  caller  came  in  the  day-time  and 
left  her  egg  in  another  room.  She  had  no  colors 
on  her  wings,  and  you  could  see  right  through 
them.  The  hind  ones  were  fastened  to  the  front 
ones  by  little  hooks,  so  she  looked  as  if  she  had 

36 


GEGID  GIDO  DOMY 


only  two  wings  when  she  really  had  four.  She 
was  a  relative  of  a  wasp,  but  she  was  not  a  wasp; 
and  instead  of  a  sting  she  carried  a  little  saw. 
That  is  why  people  called  her  Sawfly.  Her  saw 
was  a  sort  of  tool  she  used  when  she  was  laying 
her  egg,  so  that  she  could  get  it  in  far  enough 
where  it  would  be  safe.  Well,  her  daughter 
hatched  out  and  made  herself  at  home  and  ate 
all  she  wanted,  just  as  the  daughter  of  the  gray 
moth  had  done. 

Neither  of  these  was  any  relation  to  Cecid,  but 
the  next  guest  was  a  sort  of  cousin.  She  made 
herself  very  much  at  home  indeed,  and  left  more 
than  one  egg  at  Willow  House.  She  was  n't  half 
as  big  as  a  mosquito,  so  of  course  her  eggs  were 
not  large  enough  to  take  up  much  room.  Her 
children,  when  they  hatched,  looked  like  Cecid, 
only  they  were  even  tinier;  but  they  never  went 
into  the  middle  room,  and  as  she  did  not  go  out, 
these  cousins  grew  up  in  the  same  house  without 
ever  meeting  each  other. 

There  were  other  guests,  too,  though  none  of 
them  were  invited  to  come.  But  it  was  all  the 

37 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

same  to  Cecid  Cido  Domy.  Guests  might  come 
and  guests  might  stay  or  go!  So  long  as  they 
did  not  enter  her  middle  room,  or  eat  the  food 
she  needed  for  herself,  or  tear  the  house  down 
too  much,  she  was  neither  sorry  nor  glad.  In- 
deed, she  did  not  even  know  what  went  on  in 
this  wonderful  house  of  hers. 

And  her  house  was  pretty,  too,  as  well  as  won- 
derful. It  was  shaped,  as  you  know,  very  much 
like  the  cones  that  grow  on  Christ- 
mas trees;  but  the  color  was  differ- 
ent. The  shingles  were  soft  and 
fuzzy  and  curved  up  about  it  like 
the  petals  of  a  rosebud,  so  that  they 
were  up-end-down  and  not  the  way 
houses  are  usually  shingled.  But 
you  must  remember  that  this  was 
the  house  of  Cecid  Cido  Domy,  and 

.    ,  -,  .  ,    .  ,  ,    Hone  Cecid' s  house 

not  be  surprised  at  anything  about   would  look  lflt 
it.     Or  perhaps  everything  about  it  we  cut  in  tvo. 
will  surprise  you,  for  it  was  all  so  queer  and  dif- 
ferent from  other  houses. 

It  may  have  looked  as  much  like  a  rosebud  as 

38 


GEGID  GIDO  DOMY 


it  did  like  a  cone;  for  the  shingles  were  stained 
creamy  white  at  the  small  end,  and  were  touched 
with  pink  across  the  middle,  while  the  wide- 
curved  outside  end  was  silvery  green.  There 
never  were  prettier  shingles  made;  and  to  think 
that,  if  it  had  not  been  for  Cecid  Cido  Domy, 
each  of  them  would  have  been  just  a  green  willow 
leaf! 

The  way  she  changed  green  leaves  into  fuzzy 
shingles  is  a  secret.  Some  people  think  that  she 
poured  out  a  juice  on  the  tip  of  the  twig  in  the 
spring,  when  the  leaf-buds  were  ready  to  grow 
very  fast,  and  that  this  juice  had  power  to  change 
the  way  they  grew.  All  we  really  know  about  it 
for  sure  is  that,  whenever  Cecid  Cido  Domy  lives 
on  a  willow  branch,  a  wonderful  house  grows  up 
around  her,  and  that  the  house  is  made  of  what 
started  to  be  just  green  willow  leaves. 

The  middle  room  had  bare  wooden  walls, 
with  the  tiny  brown  boards  going  straight  up 
and  down.  They  met  at  the  top  in  a  point,  but 
were  not  fastened  together.  That  was  the  door 
to  the  room,  and  as  Cecid  stayed  in  and  the 

39 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

other  wee  people  in  the  house  stayed  out,  this 
door  was  not  used  often.  In  fact,  it  was  used  but 
once,  and  that  was  the  time  Cecid  Cido  Domy 
went  out  never  to  come  back  again. 

But  she  had  not  yet  left  home,  for  the  March 
winds  were  blowing  and  it  was  not  warm  enough. 
The  pussies  on  the  next  willow  bush  had  crept 
out  of  their  little  brown  winter  covers  and  looked 
as  if  they  were  sleeping  in  the  sun.  Some  little 
birds  with  black  caps  on  their  heads  were  flying 
quickly  here  and  there,  and  were  so  happy  that 
they  sang  " Chick-dee-dee,  dee-dee,"  and  then 
called  " Fee-bee"  sweetly,  in  a  different  tone,  as 
if  one  song  were  not  enough  to  show  how  joyous 
they  were. 

All  this  meant  nothing  at  all  to  Cecid  Cido 
Domy,  who  slept  in  her  wooden  room,  as  she 
had  done  ever  since  she  went  to  sleep  the  fall 
before  when  cold  weather  came  on. 

She  was  not  much  to  look  at  when  she  went 
to  sleep  —  only  a  little  wiggly  thing  so  short  that 
it  would  have  taken  eight  of  her  to  be  an  inch 
long.  She  had  no  feet,  and  from  her  shape  it  was 

40 


CEGID  GIDO  DOMY 


hard  to  tell  which  end  her  mouth  was  on.   She 

had  nothing  that  looked  like  a  head,  and  one 

end  seemed  about  as  much  like  a  tail  as  the 

other.     The  easiest  way  to 

tell  which  was  which,  was  to 

see  what  end  she  stood  on; 

for  she  stood  on  her  tail  and 

not  on  her  head.  Either  she 

was  yellow  at  one  time  and 

pink  at  another,  or  she  was 

a  color  that  looked  different 

to  different  people;  for  some 

called  her  yellow  and  some 

called  her  pink. 

No,  she  was  not  much  to 
look  at,  being  so  small  and  having  so  little 
shape.  But  you  can't  always  tell,  from  just 
looks,  how  much  any  living  thing  can  do;  and 
Cecid  Cido  Domy  was  wonderful  if  she  did  n't 
look  it — wonderful  enough  to  get  a  home  for 
herself  and  others,  too,  by  making  a  willow- 
switch  blossom  into  a  rose. 

She  did  another  wonderful  thing,  too,  before 

41 


She  teas  not  much  to  look  at 
rchen  she  tcent  to  sleep. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

she  went  to  sleep  in  the  fall.  That  was  after  she 
had  taken  the  last  meal  she  was  ever  to  have  in 
Willow  House,  and  after  she  had  changed  her 
dress  a  few  times,  and  was  as  long  as  one  eighth 
of  an  inch.  She  was  old  to  be  so  tiny,  for  she  had 
hatched  out  in  the  spring,  and  it  had  taken  her 
until  fall  to  grow  even  as  big  as  that,  though  her 
house  had  grown  up  about  her  quite  quickly. 

The  wonderful  thing  she  did  before  she  went 
to  sleep  for  the  winter  was  to  spin  a  little  box  all 
about  herself.  It  was  not  a  warm  one,  for  it  was 
so  thin  it  could  be  torn  by  the  slightest  touch. 
But  there  was  nothing  in  the  middle  room  to 
tear  it  except  Cecid,  and  you  may  be  sure  she 
did  n't,  after  working  so  busily  to  make  it. 

Although  she  did  not  have  enough  of  a  mouth 
to  make  her  head  look  like  a  head,  it  was  as 
much  as  she  needed,  and  it  had  a  hole  opening 
into  it  out  of  which  she  could  spill  a  sort  of  silk 
glue  —  the  thinnest,  finest  glue  you  can  imag- 
ine. As  soon  as  it  touched  the  air  it  grew  stiff  so 
that  it  did  not  stick  to  her.  In  this  way  she  made 
a  little  thin  box  all  about  her,  somewhat  as  a 

42 


GEGID   GIDO   DOMY 


caterpillar  spins  a  silk  cocoon.  It  was  the  color 
of  water,  so  that  she  could  be  seen  inside  the 
box,  as  if  it  had  been  glass. 

There  Cecid  Cido  Domy  slept,  standing  on 
her  tail,  in  her  glassy  silk  box  in  the  middle  room 
of  Willow  House. 

While  she  slept  a  change  came  to  her  as  strange 
as  the  change  which  came  to  the  willow  when  the 
tip  of  one  of  its  branches  turned  into  a  rosebud 
cone.  She  changed  from  a  maggot,  with  both 
ends  pointed  and  looking  much  alike,  into  a 
tiny  pink  pupa,  with  something  on  her  sides 
that  looked  the  way  wings  do  when  they  begin 
to  grow. 

Then  she  changed  from  a  pupa  into  a  little 
midget  that  looked  something  like  a  small-sized 
mosquito.  By  this  time  she  wras  awrake,  and  had 
pushed  her  way  out  of  her  glassy  box  and  up, 
up  through  the  middle  of  the  middle  room  to 
the  doorway  wrhere,  for  the  very  first  time  in  her 
life,  she  stood  where  it  was  light.  She  was  no 
longer  in  the  dark,  and  she  was  no  longer  blind. 
Eyes  had  come  to  her  in  her  great  change,  and 

43 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

she  now  had  a  good  little  head  to  wear  them  on 
and  two  long  feelers  to  wave  out  in  front.  She 
did  not  stand  on  her  tail  any  more,  and  she  had 
six  slender  legs  to  hold  her  up  and  walk  on. 


Then  she  changed  into  a  little  midget. 

But  she  did  not  need  just  to  walk,  for  she  had 
wings.  There  was  something  strange  about  them, 
though,  for  she  had  but  two. 

Now  Van  and  Bumble  and  Jack  and  Carol  all 
had  four  wings;  and  could  Cecid  Cido  Domy  get 
along  with  two? 

44 


GECID   GIDO   DOMY 


Well,  she  had  as  many  as  a  mosquito  has,  and 
two  are  enough  for  a  bird  or  a  bat!  Besides,  she 
had  two  pegs  which  helped  her  fly. 

It  was  a  warm  day  in  spring  when  she  stood 
by  the  door  of  her  home,  that  was  now  old  with 
the  storms  of  winter.  It  was  about  the  time  that 
willow-leaves  begin  to  grow.  So  she  could  not 
stand  there  long,  for  she  had  an  errand  to  do  in 
the  world.  A  very  important  errand  it  was,  too. 
So  important  that,  if  she  did  not  attend  to  it 
and  at  just  the  right  time,  there  would  be  no 
willow  houses  for  her  children,  and  it  would  be  a 
pity  to  have  them  hatch  too  late  for  that. 

Off  she  went  —  her  two  wings  and  two  pegs 
were  enough,  and  it  would  never,  never  do  to  be 
too  late!  And  here  and  there,  near  the  bank  of 
a  little  river,  Cecid  Cido  Domy  might  have  been 
seen  that  spring,  seeking  the  willow-tips  and  lay- 
ing her  eggs  one  by  one  so  that  her  little  blind, 
legless  babies  might  hatch  when  each  willow- 
switch  was  just  ready  to  have  its  leaves  turned 
into  shingles,  stained  creamy  white  and  pink 
and  silvery  green,  and  curved  like  the  pretty 

45 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

petals  of  a  rosebud  about  the  middle  room, 
which  should  hide  within  its  bare  wooden  walls 
a  secret  all  its  own. 

And  so,  when  the  March  wind  blows  the  fur  of 
the  pussies  sunning  themselves  on  the  willow- 
twig,  and  the  happy  bird  with  a  black  cap  calls, 
" Chick-dee-dee,  dee-dee/'  and,  perhaps  more 
sweetly  still,  "  Fee-bee, "  is  it  very  strange  that 
we  pick  some  twigs  that  have  no  pussies  on  them, 
but,  instead,  a  little  sleeping  insect  in  a  glassy 
silk  box  in  the  heart  of  a  fuzzy  cone  —  hoping 
that  we  may  see,  when  the  days  are  warmer,  the 
little  creature  come  forth  and  shake  her  wings? 
For  fairy  or  witch  or  what-not,  Cecid  Cido  Domy 
is  a  wonder  well  worth  seeing;  and  if  she  does  not 
bewitch  the  willow-branch,  just  what  does  she  do 
to  it? 


IV 
POLY,   THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

EASTER  came  in  April  that  year,  which  was 
much  earlier  than  Poly,  who  lived  in  the  north, 
would  have  come  out  of  her  chrysalis  if  she  had 
not  put  it  where  she  did.  The  fall  before,  when 
she  was  ready  to  spin  a  peg  for  her  tail  to  hang 
on  and  a  belt  to  hold  herself  up  with,  while  she 
waited  to  be  a  butterfly,  she  left  the  parsnip 
plant  she  had  been  living  on  in  the  garden  and 
took  a  very  hurried  trip.  It  was  the  first  time 
she  had  ever  been  away  from  her  parsnip  home, 
but  now  that  she  had  started,  she  seemed  to  be 
in  a  rush  to  get  away  from  it.  At  the  same  time 
she  seemed  to  be  trying  to  get  somewhere  else  as 
quickly  as  she  could.  So  while  she  was  running 
away  from  one  place  and  running  into  another, 
she  climbed  up  the  side  of  an  empty  house  and 
crept  in  through  a  broken  window.  When  she 
had  gone  as  far  as  that,  she  settled  down  for  the 
winter  and  turned  into  a  chrysalis  then  and  there 

47 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 


-that  is,  she  did  so  after  she  had  spun  a  peg  for 
her  tail  and  a  belt  to  hold  her  up. 

Soon  after  that,  Papil,  another  caterpillar  from 
another  parsnip  plant,  traveled  along  much  the 
same  path  that  Poly  had  taken,  and  in  much 
the  same  hurry  to  get 
away  from  somewhere 
and  go  somewhere  else. 
He  found  the  broken 
window,  too,  and  went 
in  and  spun  a  tail- 
peg  and  a  belt  and 
changed  into  a  chrys- 
alis, just  as  Poly  had 
done. 

The  house  that  they 
chose  would  have  been 
as  good  as  an  old  shed 
or  a  fence-post  if  it  had 
stayed  empty.  But  it 
didn't.  When  the  Sol- 
dier came  back  from 
France,  his  head  was 


Papil  spun  a  peg  and  a  belt  and 
changed  into  a  chrysalis  just  as 
Poly  had  done. 


48 


POLY,  THE  EASTER   BUTTERFLY 

so  tired  that  he  wanted  to  go  to  the  home  where 
he  had  lived  when  he  was  a  little  boy,  until  he 
was  rested. 

That  is  how  it  happened  that  he  found  Poly 
and  Papil  when  he  was  mending  the  window. 
At  first  he  thought  he  would  take  them  out  to 
the  shed.  But  when  he  touched  Poly,  she  wig- 
gled a  little  as  if  she  wanted  to  be  let  alone.  When 
he  saw  what  a  nice  silk  peg  she  had  made  for  her 
tail  to  hold  on  to,  and  what  a  fine  belt  she  had 
drawn  about  her  to  keep  her  in  place,  he  did  n't 
wish  to  take  her  down.  So  he  let  them  both  stay 
for  company,  and  put  flowering  plants  in  the 
window  so  that  they  could  have  sweet  cups  to 
drink  from  when  they  came  to  be  butterflies. 

Poly  stayed  in  her  chrysalis  cell  all  winter,  for 
it  was  not  so  warm  by  the  window  as  nearer  the 
fireplace.  And  then,  one  day  in  April,  she  pushed 
against  her  cell  until  the  door  opened  and  she 
came  out  through  the  crack. 

She  was  a  butterfly  now,  but  her  wings  were 
not  big  enough  to  fly  with.  They  were  just  four 
limp,  floppy  little  flaps,  hanging  down  her  back. 

49 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 


She  had  to  cling  with  her  six  long  slender  black 
legs  to  keep  from  falling  —  her  wings  were  of  no 
use.  Four  little  wings  good  for  nothing  at  all! 

But  wait!  As  Poly  clung  to  the  thin  wall  of 
her  winter  cell,  the  wings  were  getting  bigger! 
They  were  twice  as  big  as  at  first  and  still  grow- 
ing! My,  oh  my,  oh  my!  How  they  grew!  Do 
you  suppose  they  were  getting  big  enough  to 
carry  Poly  to  the  blossoms? 

Yes,  and  it  was  Easter  Day.  There  were  tall 
white  lilies  and  little  blue  lilies  and  other  flowers, 
too;  and  they  were  so  sweet  that  Poly  spread 
her  wings  when  they  were  strong  enough,  and 
fluttered  over  to  the  little  blue  lilies,  and  uncoiled 
her  long  black  tongue  and  drank,  for  she  was 
thirsty. 

And  there,  drinking  nectar  from  the  next  lily, 
was  Papil,  who  had  come  out  that  very  same  day 
and  had  found  the  pretty  sweet  cups  first.  So 
in  the  large  bay-window,  full  of  flowers,  Poly 
and  Papil  spent  their  Easter  Day  together,  and, 
though  they  did  not  know  it,  the  Soldier  watched 
them  a  long  while  and  smiled. 

50 


When  they  become  butterflies  they  drink  nectar  from  flowers. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

Butterflies  among  the  flowers  are  beautiful  on 
any  day,  but  at  Easter  time  they  have  a  special 
meaning. 

There  is  a  reason  why  people  paint  downy 
chickens  on  their  Easter  cards  and  give  their 
friends  lilies  at  that  time.  The  live  chick  comes 
from  the  still  egg;  the  live  lily  grows  from  the 
dull  brown  bulb.  Such  things  make  us  think 
how  wonderful  life  is. 

So  does  the  butterfly,  who  breaks  the  walls  of 
the  quiet  chrysalis  and  comes  out  so  full  of  life 
and  beauty.  Many  years  ago  people  loved  the 
butterfly  because  of  this,  and  gave  her  a  sweet 
old  name,  "Psyche,"  which  means  "the  soul." 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  Soldier  smiled,  with 
both  lilies  and  butterflies  to  make  life  look  beau- 
tiful to  him  that  Easter  Day. 

Poly  and  Papil  lived  among  the  flowers  for 
several  \veeks  before  Poly  seemed  to  notice  that 
there  was  a  big  pot  of  carrots  and  one  of  parsnips 
and  one  of  celery  growing  there  in  the  bay- 
window.  These  plants  had  no  flowers,  and  why 
should  Poly  care  about  just  leaves?  She  could 

52 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

not  eat  them  if  she  tried,  with  her  long  tongue. 

Ah,  but  there  was  a  time  when  Poly  had  no 
long  tongue — no  tongue  at  all,  in  fact,  for  it 
was  when  she  was  only  an  egg;  and  in  those  days 
she  had  lived  on  the  tip  of  a  parsnip  leaf.  So  we 
must  not  be  surprised  to  find  her,  when  she  had 
eggs  of  her  own,  putting  them  on  such  leaves  as 
she  herself  could  have  eaten  when  she  was  a 
caterpillar  just  hatched  from  an  egg. 

Now  Poly  in  her  caterpillar  days  could  have 
eaten  a  great  many  kinds  of  leaves  besides  par- 
snips, if  her  mother  had  left  her  on  them;  but  I 
have  never  heard  that  she  could  eat  anything 
that  did  not  belong  to  the  parsnip  family.  So  if 
you  find  a  caterpillar  like  Poly  eating  any  sort 
of  leaf,  you  may  nod  your  head  wisely  and  say, 
"That  belongs  to  the  parsnip  family,"  whether 
you  ever  saw  that  kind  of  plant  before  or  not. 
You  see  that,  if  you  know  a  Poly  caterpillar,  she 
can  teach  you  a  great  deal  about  plants.  She 
never  makes  a  mistake.  Why,  she  would  even 
go  so  far  as  to  starve  to  death  if  any  one  tried  to 
feed  her  a  leaf  that  belonged  to  the  wrong  fam- 

53 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

ily.  That  is,  when  she  is  a  caterpillar.  When  she 
is  a  butterfly,  she  drinks  nectar  from  blossoms 


- 


If  you  find  a  caterpillar  like  Poly, 
she  can  teach  you  a  great  deal. 


of  many  families  and  carries  pollen  for  them  all. 
But  when  egg-laying  time  comes,  she  flies  back 
to  the  parsnip  family  just  as  if  she  remembered 
something. 

54 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

Now  some  of  the  plants  in  this  family  are 
kinds  that  men,  as  well  as  Hexapods,  like  to 
eat,  and  we  grow  them  for  food.  That  is  the 
reason  we  sometimes  have  to  keep  Poly's  chil- 
dren out  of  our  gardens,  if  there  are  so  many 
of  them  that  they  eat  more  than  we  think  we 
can  spare.  It  is  not  hard  to  keep  them  out,  for 
they  do  not  hide  and  are  easily  seen.  Some 
people  let  them  have  a  few  plants  at  the  end  of 
the  row,  because  they  like  to  watch  the  funny 
caterpillars,  and  because  they  love  to  see  the 
beautiful  butterflies  they  change  into.  That  is 
what  the  Soldier  did. 

Zene,  who  hatched  out  of  Poly's  first  egg,  was 
contented  enough  when  she  crept  from  her  shell 
on  the  tip  of  a  celery-leaf.  She  hardly  stopped  to 
turn  round  before  she  began  her  green  breakfast. 
Being  a  healthy  baby,  she  was  hungry,  and  ate 
most  of  the  time  except  when  she  had  to  change 
her  dress.  This  she  did  for  herself  from  the  very 
first,  for  Poly  never  did  anything  for  her  children 
after  she  had  put  her  eggs  on  the  right  plants. 
She  had  taken  care  of  her  own  dresses  when  she 

55 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

was  a  caterpillar,  and  if  her  daughter  could  n't 
do  the  same,  so  much  the  worse  for  Zene  ! 

But  Zene  could!  Of  course  she  could!  Only  it 
was  hard  to  do,  and  it  made  her  so  nearly  sick 
every  time  she  changed  her  dress  that  for  two 
days  she  could  n't  eat  a  thing.  She  just  spun  a 
thin  mat  of  silk  and  rested  on  that.  You  might 
think  that  Zene  would  have  gone  on  wearing  the 
same  one  if  it  was  so  much  trouble  to  change. 

Maybe  she  would,  if  she  could.  But  she  was 
such  a  hungry  little  thing  that  she  grew  larger 
than  her  dress,  and  her  head  got  bigger  than 
her  skull,  and  grew  out  of  it  at  the  back,  until  it 
looked  like  a  bunch  inside  the  neck  of  her  tight 
old  dress.  Of  course,  when  s,he  got  as  fat  as  that, 
there  was  nothing  to  do  but  push  and  jerk  until 
she  broke  something.  The  first  thing  that  ripped 
was  a  seam  right  around  her  collar,  and  of  course 
when  that  tore  —  off  dropped  her  skull! 

That  gave  her  new  head  a  chance  to  come  out 
of  the  collar-hole,  and  then  she  crept  right  out 
after  her  head.  And  there  was  her  old  dress  lying 
empty  on  the  leaf. 

56 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

Zene  had  a  funny  habit.  Almost  every  time 
she  changed  her  dress,  she  turned  round  after 
she  had  crept  out  of  it  and  ate  it  up  before  she 
went  on  with  her  celery  salad.  It  tasted  good  to 
her,  so  she  did  not  waste  it.  When  she  did  n't 
need  it  outside  any  more,  she  put  it  inside.  She 
did  n't  eat  her  skull.  That  just  rolled  off  the 
leaf. 

Each  dress  lasted  about  a  week  before  she  had 
to  change,  and  each  new  one  was  prettier  than 
the  one  before.  Her  first  ones  had  little  bunches 
on  them  and  a  wide  white  sash  shaped  something 
like  a  saddle.  They  did  \vell  enough,  but  you 
ought  to  have  seen  her  last  dress.  That  was 
lovely!  It  was  a  pretty  shade  of  green,  with 
black  bands  for  trimming,  and  every  black  band 
had  a  row  of  yellow  spots  on  it. 

It  was  a  showy  dress,  Zene's  last  one.  It 
could  be  seen  nearly  as  far  as  anyone  could  see 
the  celery  plant  she  lived  on,  and  she  never  tried 
to  hide.  Even  after  the  weather  grew  warm,  and 
the  Soldier  put  her  out  of  doors,  she  did  n't. 

Now  when  you  come  to  think  about  it,  that 

57 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

seems  queer.  When  Van  was  chased,  she  hid  by 
making  herself  look  like  the  bark  on  a  tree. 
Carol  sat  still  in  the  sand  and  did  n't  show. 
Jack  had  two  ways  of  hiding,  both  good  ones. 
Perhaps  Ann  Gusti's  funny  trick  was  the  best  of 
all,  though  Gryl  did  very  well,  as  you  would 
find  out  if  you  ever  tried  to  catch  him  for  a  pet. 

But  Zene!  There  she  stayed  right  on  the  upper 
side  of  the  leaf  and  way  out  on  the  edge,  no  mat- 
ter who  came  along. 

Now,  when  an  animal,  whether  it  has  four 
feet  or  more,  does  not  hide  itself  when  things 
come  near  it,  there  is  some  very  good  reason. 

Do  you  know  what  a  wood-pussy  is?  That 
pretty  animal,  with  black  and  white  stripes  and 
a  tail  like  a  plume,  walks  slowly  and  unafraid 
along  the  path.  You  can  see  him  when  he  is 
still  far  off.  If  you  wish  to  walk  the  other  way, 
you  have  plenty  of  time.  If  you  choose  to  go  and 
meet  him,  he  does  not  bother  to  turn  out  to  the 
right  to  let  you  pass.  He  has  shown  you  his 
black  and  white  stripes  as  a  warning.  If  after 
that  you  are  foolish  enough  to  come  too  near- 

58 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

you  will  wish  you  had  n't,  that  is  all.  The  wood- 
pussy  does  not  care.  He  does  n't  mind  the  way 
he  smells. 

Now,  can  it  be  that  Zene  was  unafraid  during 
all  her  caterpillar  days?  Did  nothing  scare  her? 
Did  Daddy  Bird  try  to  take  her  home  to  his 
young  ones?  Was  the  white  sash  on  her  baby 
dresses  to  show  where  she  was?  Were  the  black 
and  green  stripes  on  her  last  pretty  dress  a 
warning? 

Well,  something  shook  the  leaf  she  was  on 
one  day,  sharply  and  quickly,  and  this  is  what 
happened: 

Zene  threw  up  her  head,  and  just  behind  it, 
from  a  slit  in  her  back,  she  pushed  out  a  pair  of 
soft  orange-colored  horns.  And  just  then  there 
was  a  queer,  oh,  a  very  queer  and  very  strong 
smell  all  around  that  celery  plant. 

I  think  it  would  have  made  you  laugh  if  you 
had  seen  her.  The  Soldier  laughed,  and  said 
something  about  a  "gas-attack";  but  that  is 
soldier  talk,  and  perhaps  you  will  not  under- 
stand what  he  meant. 

59 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

Zene's  pair  of  horns  was  something  like  a 
pocket  with  two  long  pointed  corners  turned 
inside-out.  In  a  moment  she  drew  it  down  be- 
hind her  head  so  that  it  was  right-side-out,  inside 
her  body,  and  all  out  of  sight;  and  the  strange 
smell  was  soon  gone. 

But  though  it  could  not  be  seen,  the  horn- 
pocket  was  there  just  the  same,  and  already  filled 
again  with  gas  or  whatever  it  was  that  Zene 
poured  into  the  air  when  she  threw  her  orange- 
colored  pocket  inside  out  and  showed  her  horns. 
The  stuff  in  her  pocket  is  sour,  and  burns  if  it 
touches  the  tongue.  Maybe  Daddy  Bird  would 
not  like  that.  So  maybe  Zene's  bright  stripes 
were  one  warning,  and  maybe  the  smell  was 
another. 

Perhaps  her  pretty  dress,  that  could  be  seen  so 
far,  was  like  a  danger-flag,  and  was  a  signal  to 
other  little  creatures  not  to  come  too  near  her  if 
they  did  n't  like  queer  smells  and  sour,  burny 
tastes. 

However  that  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  Zene 
never  seemed  scared,  and  never  hid  from  any- 

60 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

thing  until  she  was  ready  to  throw  away  her  last 
dress,  pocket  and  all. 

When  that  time  came,  she  left  her  celery  plant 
in  a  hurry,  and  went  somewhere  else  as  fast  as 
she  could.  She  climbed  up  the  side  of  the  house 
near  where  Poly  had  the  fall  before,  but  did  n't 
go  in  through  the  window.  That  was  mended. 
Instead,  she  prepared  to  hide  on  the  outside  of 
the  house  right  in  plain  sight. 

First  she  rested  for  a  whole  day  with  her  head 
pointed  straight  up  and  her  tail  pointed  straight 
down.  Once  in  a  while  she  would  swing  a  few 
loops  of  silk  by  moving  her  head,  but  not  often. 
The  second  day  she  turned  around  so  that  her 
head  was  down  and  her  tail  was  up.  Then  she 
went  to  work  and  spun  silk  from  a  tube  that 
opened  in  her  mouth.  She  swung  out  a  silk 
thread  as  far  as  her  head  would  reach  to  one  side 
without  moving  the  rest  of  her  body.  Then  she 
grabbed  the  thread  with  her  first  pair  of  feet, 
which  seemed  more  like  arms,  and  pulled  it  back 
something  as  a  man  hauls  up  a  rope  "  hand  over 
hand."  That  made  little  folds  in  it,  and  she 

61 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

stuck  the  folded  silk  thread  to  the  board  with 
silk  glue.  Then  she  swung  out  her  head  to  the 
other  side,  and  pulled  back  the  thread  with  her 
"hands,"  and  glued  down  that  folded  part. 
This  was  the  way  she  made  her  peg  of  silk,  swing- 
ing her  head  from  side  to  side  and  pulling  back 
each  thread  in  folds  and  sticking  it  down.  It  was 
a  firm  peg  and  a  little  curved,  and  it  took  her 
about  half  an  hour  to  make  it. 

As  soon  as  it  was  done,  she  turned  round 
again  so  that  she  was  head  up  and  tail  down 
once  more.  Her  tail  seemed  to  be  in  a  hurry  to 
find  the  peg,  and  felt  around  for  it  as  if  it  were 
hunting  for  something.  After  lifting  her  tail  up 
and  feeling  to  one  side  and  then  the  other,  she 
at  last  hit  the  peg,  and  then  she  took  right  hold 
of  it  with  the  hooks  in  her  last  pair  of  feet  and 
tangled  them  up  in  the  silk  threads  and  pulled 
tight  until  she  held  fast.  She  had  hitched  herself 
by  her  own  tail  and  could  n't  get  away. 

But  she  was  not  yet  ready  to  be  a  chrysalis. 
For  Zene  was  not  going  to  hang  head  down  like 
Van  while  she  waited  to  be  a  butterfly.  No,  she 

62 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

was  going  to  sleep  head  up,  so  she  needed  more 
than  a  tail-peg  to  hold  her. 

What  she  needed  was  a  loose  belt  reaching 
from  the  board  around  her  body.  So  she  spun 
it.  She  glued  the  end  of  the  first  silk  to  the 
side  of  the  house,  and  then  spun  a  loop  in  front 
of  her,  stretching  it  up  between  her  first  and 
second  pairs  of  legs,  using  the  first  pair  like  arms 
to  catch  it  into  place  when  she  had  spun  it  long 
enough  so  that  her  head  could  bend  down  and 
fasten  the  other  end  to  the  house.  Thus  she 
spun  her  belt,  holding  it  up  something  like  a 
skein  of  yarn  in  her  "arms,"  and  gluing  the 
end  to  the  board  each  time.  Once  it  broke  while 
it  was  still  very  weak,  and  she  fell  way  over  to 
one  side.  But  brave  patient  little  Zene,  with  her 
tail  hitched  fast,  felt  her  way  back  into  place  and 
began  all  over  again. 

After  about  half  an  hour's  hard  work  on  the 
belt  that,  too,  was  done,  and  Zene  drew  down 
her  head  and  stuck  it  up  inside  the  belt,  and 
there  she  was  fastened,  tail  down  and  head  up, 
for  her  sleep. 

63 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Two  days  later  she  began  to  stretch  and  jerk 
inside  her  striped  dress.  What  happened  then 
was  funny  and  wonderful. 

Zene's  dress  ripped  a  little  way  down  the  mid- 
dle of  the  back  just  behind  her  head,  and  some- 
thing shaped  like  a  little  pug-nose  stuck  out. 
Then  two  little  things  like  ears  pushed  up  and 
split  her  skull  and  knocked  it  off.  Then  the 
queer  thing  inside  Zene's  dress,  that  had  the 
pug  nose  and  the  ears,  pushed  the  dress  down 
toward  the  tail  like  a  little  wad  of  clothes  it  was 
going  to  step  out  of.  Then  it  jerked  its  tail  out 
of  the  clothes  and  poked  it  out  over  them  and 
caught  its  tip  into  the  tail-peg  again  and  wig- 
gled, and  then  the  dress  dropped  to  the  ground. 

And  was  that  really  Zene,  with  a  funny  pug- 
nose  and  two  funny  ears?  It  did  n't  look  any- 
thing like  Zene  while  she  was  a  caterpillar,  and 
it  certainly  did  n't  look  as  Zene  would  when  it 
came  time  for  her  to  be  a  butterfly. 

But  Zene  was  inside  that  queer-shaped  little 
case,  for  all  that.  And  at  last  she  had  hidden; 
for  the  case  soon  grew  to  be  about  the  color  of 

64 


POLY,  THE  EASTER  BUTTERFLY 

the  board  on  the  side  of  the  old  house,  and  she 
could  not  be  seen  far  away. 

Zene  did  not  sleep  all  winter  like  her  mother  in 
the  chrysalis  case,  but  changed  into  a  butterfly 
in  about  two  weeks,  and  laid  her  eggs  on  some 
caraway  leaves. 

It  was  still  summer  when  her  children  hatched, 
and  Poly,  the  oldest  and  named  for  her  grand- 
mother, did  all  the  things  her  grandmother  had 
done  except  getting  inside  the  Soldier's  house 
to  make  her  chrysalis.  It  was  late  in  May  when 
she  wakened  in  the  spring.  But  as  butterflies 
have  their  own  calendars  instead  of  ours,  per- 
haps it  was  her  Easter  Day,  just  the  same. 


When  you  stop  to  think  about  it  you  remember  that  a 
bitter-sweet  vine  does  not  have  thorns. 


JUMPING  JACK 

You  would  never  have  thought,  to  see  Jack, 
that  he  could  jump.  He  looked  as  if  he  had 
grown  on  the  bitter-sweet  vine.  He  looked  like 
a  thorn  that  would  stay  there  even  in  winter, 
like  the  bright  red  berries. 

But  when  you  stopped  to  think  about  it,  you 
would  remember  that  a  bitter-sweet  vine  does 
not  have  thorns  —  not  real  ones.  Then  you 
would  point  your  finger  at  Jack  and  say,  "You 
can't  fool  me,  sir!  You  are  not  a  thorn";  and 
before  you  got  through  telling  him  that,  Jack 
would  be  gone. 

He  would  n't  jump,  though.  Not  that  time! 
He  would  just  slip  around  to  the  other  side  of 
the  branch,  where  you  could  not  see  him,  and 
sit  there  looking  as  if  he  had  not  moved,  and  as 
if  that  were  the  place  he  had  always  grown  in. 
So  you  would  play  hide-and-seek  with  him  for  a 
long  time:  Jack  would  hide  and  you  would  seek. 

67 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 


But  if  Jack  is  touched  too  hard,  then  he  is 
nimble  and  he  is  quick  and  he  will  jump  off  with 
a  snap  and  spread  his  four 
wings  and  fly  a  little  way. 

For  Jack  can  fly,  and  so 
can  Jill,  his  little  mate;  but 
they  will  both  come  back 
again  to  drink  the  sap  of 
the  bitter-sweet  vine. 

There  they  sit  now, 
with  their  sharp  slen- 
der beaks  stuck  right 
down  through  the 
bark,  and  drawing  the 
juice  up  through  the  hollow 
tube,  as  you  suck  lemonade 
through  a  straw.   They  find 
it   pleasant  to  sit  there  all 
the  summer  day  and  sip  the 
juice  of  the  vine. 

Do  you  think  Jack  and 
Jill  look  like  little  birds?    Well,  that  is   just 
what  a  man  who  watched  them  nearly  seventy 

68 


Jack  and  Jill 


JUMPING  JACK 


years  ago  thought,  too.  Not  that  Jack  and  Jill 
are  seventy  years  old.  Oh  my,  no!  But  there 
were  some  others  just  like  them  on  bitter-sweet 
then. 

Our  own  little  Jack  and  Jill  hatched  out  of 
their  eggs  in  May.  They  had  stayed  in  their 
nests  all  winter  without  hatching.  Just  think  of 
it!  It  did  n't  hurt  them  one  bit.  I  don't  know 
why;  but  it  did  n't.  The  nests  they  lived  in 
while  they  were  eggs  were  holes  their  mothers 
cut  in  the  stem  of  the  vine  and  tucked  full  of 
eggs,  in  little  rows.  Jack  had  twelve  brother- 
and  sister-eggs  in  the  nest  with  him,  and  Jill 
had  even  more. 

Jack  was  the  last  egg  his  mother  put  through 
the  hole  in  the  bark  into  the  nest.  When  he  was 
safely  poked  down  at  the  end  of  the  row,  she 
covered  the  hole  with  something  that  looked  like 
the  nice  sticky  frosting  that  is  dripped  from  a 
spoon  to  the  top  of  a  cake.  It  was  n't  sweet,  so 
it  could  n't  have  been  frosting;  but  that  is  the 
way  it  looked,  and  it  was  in  a  wavy  heap  almost 
as  big  as  Jack's  mother. 

69 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Now  was  n't  that  a  good  way  of  tucking  her 
eggs  in — to  plaster  them  down  with  a  sticky 
white  blanket?  Jill's  mother  made  her  nest  just 
the  same  way.  So  there  they  were,  snug  as  could 
be,  little  Jack  and  Jill  and  all  their  brother- 
and  sister-eggs. 

Think  of  the  things  that  were  to  happen  before 
they  could  hatch!  Ann  Gusti  was  still  playing 
her  clown  tricks  in  the  meadow,  with  the  big 
blue  sky  for  a  tent,  several  weeks  after  Jack  and 
Jill  were  tucked  into  their  beds.  Gryl  sat  before 
his  open  door,  and  fiddled  a  happy  lullaby  of 
"Cri-cri-cri."  Luna,  brown  as  a  nut,  lay  on  the 
ground  in  her  own  silk  bedroom,  fast  asleep, 
too. 

Cold  weather  came,  when  the  ice  did  not  melt 
even  in  the  daytime  and  when  the  chilly  earth 
was  wrapped  in  a  deep  blanket  of  snow,  as  white 
as  the  cover  Jack's  mother  had  put  over  him 
and  much  thicker. 

There  were  a  few  days  in  January  when  the 
snow  thawed,  and  Van  wakened  in  the  hollow 
tree,  and  came  out,  and  flew  about  the  sunny 

70 


JUMPING  JACK 


places  in  the  lane,  and  drank  at  the  edge  of  a 
little  pool. 

Candlemas  Day  came,  and  Old  Bumble  was 
so  sound  asleep  she  never  even  buzzed. 

And  all  this  time  Jack  slept  under  his  blanket, 
that  was  wrapped  so  closely  to  the  twig  that  the 
snow  could  not  sift  in,  and  stuck  down  so  tightly 
that  the  wind  could  not  lift  the  corners. 

Even  when  the  willow  pussies  crept  out  along 
the  twigs  to  warm  their  fur  in  the  March  sun- 
even  then  Jack  was  asleep. 

Some  pretty  blue  lilies  blossomed  for  Easter 
Day,  but  Jack  was  still  a  tiny  Easter  egg  him- 
self, and  it  was  not  yet  time  for  him  to  hatch. 

And  then  at  last  May  came  and  woke  him. 
How  did  she  call  him  when  he  had  slept  so  long 
and  so  soundly?  Perhaps  with  her  sunshine, 
which  brooded  the  nest  of  eggs  in  the  bitter- 
sweet vine  with  its  warmth,  as  a  mother  hen 
broods  over  her  nest  of  eggs  in  the  hay  with  her 
cozy  feathers. 

And  here  he  was  —  a  feeble  baby,  so  wee  you 
would  need  a  magnifying  glass  to  see  him  with! 

71 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

What  was  he  to  do  with  that  heavy  blanket  over 
him?  If  his  mother  had  stuck  it  down  so  tightly 
that  even  the  strong  north  wind  could  not  move 
it,  how  was  Jack  to  get  out  of  bed?  Poor  little 
Jack  with  his  twelve  brothers  and  sisters!  What- 
ever were  they  to  do? 

Well,  here  he  comes,  like  a  tiny  Jack-in-a-box, 
poking  his  head  right  up  through  the  white 
blanket.  He  does  not  try  to  lift  it;  he  just  sticks 
up  his  yellow  head  and  red  eyes,  and  pushes 
himself  out  of  bed. 

Of  course  Jack  is  thirsty,  and  of  course  a  baby 
who  can  get  out  of  his  nest  all  by  himself  the 
first  day  can  feed  himself,  too.  So  out  he  creeps 
to  the  tender  leaf,  and  digs  his  little  beak  down 
into  it,  and  takes  his  first  drink  of  sap. 

He  likes  it!  Oh  my!  my!  how  he  likes  it!  He 
likes  it  so  well  that  for  seven  whole  days  he  hardly 
stops  drinking. 

By  that  time  his  first  baby  clothes  are  so  tight 
that  he  can  not  swallow  another  drop.  What  is 
the  greedy  youngster  to  do  about  that?  His 
clothes  are  grown  on  him,  too!  Think  of  it! 

72 


JUMPING  JACK 


Never  mind.  Baby  Jack  is  so  strong  now, 
after  taking  a  drink  that  is  seven  days  long, 
that  all  he  has  to  do  is  to  stretch  himself;  and 
this  rips  his  clothes  in 
a  little  seam  near  the 
back  of  his  head  and 
tears  his  baby  cap. 
Now  he  can  pull  his 
head  out  of  the  old  cap 
and  then  get  out  of 
his  first  baby  clothes 
through  the  torn 
place. 

His  first  dress  had 
long  hairs  on  it,  but 
his  second  one,  which 
grew  on  him  under 
the  old  one,  does  not 
have  these  hairs.  In- 
stead, it  has  six  lumps  in  a  row  on  the  middle 
of  his  back.  You  would  think  that  the  second 
dress,  growing  under  the  first  one,  would  be 
even  smaller  and  tighter. 

73 


Jack' s  foreign  cousins. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

But  as  it  stretches  as  Jack  grows,  he  can  take 
another  long  drink  before  his  second  dress  is 
stretched  as  big  as  it  can  be.  So  he  puts  down 
his  beak  again  and  drinks  for  six  more  days. 
Then  he  needs  a  third  dress,  which  he  gets  in 
just  the  same  way  as  before  —  he  creeps  out 
through  a  torn  place  at  the  back. 

This  time  he  still  has  the  six  lumps  in  a  row 
in  the  middle  of  his  back,  and,  besides,  a  hump 
has  begun  to  grow  at  the  back  of  his  head. 
While  he  looks  like  that,  he  takes  his  third  drink 
of  bitter-sweet  sap,  and  this  lasts  about  six  days, 
too. 

After  that  he  gets  his  fourth  suit  of  clothes  - 
much  like  the  third  one,  lumps  and  all;  only  the 
hump  on  his  shoulders  is  bigger,  and  there  are 
two  little  flaps  below  on  each  side.  These  clothes 
keep  on  stretching  for  two  whole  weeks,  so  that 
Jack  has  a  chance  to  drink  for  fourteen  days 
without  stopping  for  his  next  dress. 

But  dear,  dear!  when  he  creeps  out  of  his  fourth 
dress,  what  a  hump  he  does  have!  It  has  grown 
way  up  over  his  head.  Yes,  Jack  is  a  hump-back, 

74 


JUMPING  JACK 


and  all  the  doctors  in  the  world  can  not  cure  him. 
And  the  two  flaps  on  each  side  are  much,  much 
bigger. 

Well,  never  mind!  The  six  lumps  down  the 
middle  of  his  back  and  the  hump  on  his  should- 
ers and  the  flaps  on  his  sides  do  not  bother  him 
a  bit.  He  is  as  healthy  and  as  thirsty  as  ever. 
By  this  time  he  is  strong  enough  to  dig  his  beak 
right  down  into  the  stem  of  the  vine,  where  the 
sap  is  running  freely.  All  his  clothes  are  pale  at 
first,  but  grow  darker  as  they  get  older,  when 
they  are  gray  or  brown,  and  trimmed  with  red 
and  sometimes  with  a  little  white. 

Jack  sits  and  sips  and  grows  in  his  fifth  dress 
just  as  he  did  in  all  the  other  four;  and  at  last 
this  one  becomes  too  tight  just  as  the  others  did, 
one  after  another.  That  does  no  harm,  for  he 
can  still  have  one  more  suit  of  clothes.  So  when 
these  get  too  tight,  he  stretches  and  stretches 
inside  of  them,  until  they  rip  open  and  he  can 
crawl  out. 

When  he  is  all  out  and  has  rested  a  bit,  he  puts 
his  beak  down  into  the  bitter-sweet  vine  and  goes 

75 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

on  drinking  as  if  nothing  much  had  happened. 

Why  Jack,  don't  you  know  that  a  wonderful 
change  has  come  to  you?  Don't  you  know  that 
the  hump  on  your  shoulders  is  so  big  that  it 
makes  you  almost  twice  as  tall  as  you  would  be 
without  it?  Don't  you  know  that  four  of  your 
legs  now  look  something  like  tiny  leaves  ?  Don't 
you  know  that  your  two  hind  legs  are  longer 
than  they  were  before,  and  that  you  can  jump? 
Oh,  how  nimble  and  quick  you  can  be  when  you 
jump!  And  don't  you  know,  you  funny  Jack, 
oh,  don't  you  know  that  the  flaps  on  your  sides 
have  changed  into  wings  and  that  you  can  fly 
away  and  back  again?  Don't  you  know — don't 
you  even  know  that  you  are  no  longer  a  growing 
baby  but  a  grown-up  treehopper? 

No  matter  how  much  you  may  drink  now, 
you  cannot  be  any  bigger,  for  this  is  the  last  suit 
of  clothes  you  can  ever  have  —  the  very,  very 
last! 

How  much  of  all  this  do  you  suppose  the  queer 
little  chap  really  understands,  as  he  sits  on  the 
vine  looking  like  a  thorn? 

76 


JUMPING  JACK 


Well,  just  as  much  as  Jill  knows,  who  hatched 
on  a  May  day,  too,  and  grew  up  in  the  very  same 
way,  humped  back  and  all. 

But  while  Jack  can  only  sit  and  sip  and  jump 
and  fly  and  play  hide-and-seek  with  you  as  the 
summer  days  go  by,  Jill  finds  something  else  to 
do  before  the  weather  gets  cold. 

Jill  has  a  neat  little  tool  at  the  end  of  her 
body,  and  it  would  be  a  pity  not  to  use  it.  For 
one  thing,  it  is  a  cunning  knife,  and  with  it  she 
cuts  a  hole  in  the  twig  and  digs  out  a  nest  for 
her  eggs.  For  another  thing,  it  is  a  sort  of  bub- 
ble-blower, and  with  it  she  stirs  up  her  foam 
that  looks  like  frosting.  And  last,  it  is  a  little 
spoon  that  she  uses  to  drip  the  pretty  white 
sticky  stuff  down  over  the  nest  of  eggs.  Slowly, 
back  and  forth  and  dowrn  under  and  up  over, 
she  moves  her  spoon,  standing  all  the  time  on 
tiptoe  to  make  the  wavy  rows  of  foam  so  very, 
very  carefully. 

For  this  is  the  foam  that  stiffens  into  a  blan- 
ket to  cover  her  eggs;  and  as  she  can  not  stay 
on  the  cold  twig  to  take  care  of  them  through 

77 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 


the  winter  days  that  will  be  coming,  she  must 
do  what  she  can  to  make  the  blanket  just  right. 

She  makes  a  good  one,  little  Jill  does:  one  so 
like  the  one  that  her  mother 
put  over  her  and  the  one 
that  Jack's  mother  put  over 
him  when  they  were  eggs  in 
a  nest,  themselves,  that  you 
could  not  tell  which  of  the 
three  was  the  best. 

So  there  they  will  stay, 
tucked  in  snug  and  safe. 
Jack  Frost  will  be  about 
when  the  cold  nights  come, 
but  he  will  not  harm  them. 
North  Wind  will  whistle  through  the  bitter- 
sweet vine  and  shake  the  red  berries,  but  he  can 
not  lift  the  blanket  Jill  stuck  do\vn.  And  many 
other  strange  and  wonderful  things  will  happen 
during  the  days  of  fall  and  winter  and  early 
spring. 

But,  after  all,  nothing  will  be  stranger  and 
more  wonderful  than  when  May  calls  Jill's  ba- 

78 


This  is  the  foam  that  stiffens 

into  a  blanket  to  cover 

her  eggs. 


JUMPING  JACK 


bies,  and  each  little  yeDow  head  with  bright  red 
eyes  comes  popping  up  through  the  white  fluff 
like  a  Jack-in-a-box. 

A  May  day  is  a  pleasant  time,  when  things 
like  that  are  happening  out  on  the  bitter-sweet 
vine ! 


VI 
NATA,  THE  NYMPH 

ONCE  upon  a  time  Nata  could  not  walk  or  fly 
or  swim.  Of  course  that  was  when  she  was  an 

egg. 

While  she  was  a  helpless  little  thing  like  that, 
her  mother  dropped  her  into  the  water  and  flew 
off  and  left  her. 

This  sounds  cruel,  and  when  you  know  that 
Nata's  mother  was  the  creature  that  people 
sometimes  call  the  devil's  darning-needle,  and 
that  children  sometimes  talk  about,  with  scared 
looks  on  their  faces,  when  they  say  that  she  will 
sew  up  their  lips  and  maybe  their  eyes  and  ears, 
too,  if  she  catches  them  —  when  you  know  that 
was  Nata's  mother,  maybe  you  will  think  she 
was  just  wicked  enough  to  let  Nata  drown. 

But  it  is  always  the  best  way  not  to  be  quick 
to  believe  bad  things  about  anybody,  because 
most  of  the  time  they  are  not  true.  That  is  how 
it  was  with  Nata's  mother.  She  never  tried  to 

80 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


catch  a  girl  or  boy  in  her  life  and  she  was  n't 
anybody's  darning-needle,  and  she  could  n't  sew 
up  anything  even  if  you  held  her  right  up  to  it. 

And  Nata  did  not  drown.  She  hatched  out  as 
well  in  the  water  as  Lampy  did  in  the  ground,  or 
as  Luna  did  on  a  green  oak  leaf.  It  was  just  the 
right  place  for  her,  and  her  mother  had  done 
her  no  harm  in  putting  her  there. 

In  fact,  Nata's  mother  is  known  to  have  done 
much  good  in  the  world  —  she  caught  so  many 
flies  and  mosquitoes  that  she  was  sometimes 
spoken  of  as  a  mosquito  hawk.  She  was  a  great 
hunter  all  her  days,  and  her  real  name,  after  she 
got  her  wings,  was  Dragonfly. 

When  Nata  hatched  she  had  no  wings  and  she 
was  called  a  nymph,  which  was  just  a  name  she 
had  while  she  lived  in  the  water  —  the  same  as 
Poly  was  called  a  caterpillar  while  she  was  living 
on  a  parsnip  plant. 

Nata,  the  nymph,  looked  as  much  like  a 
grown-up  dragonfly  as  Poly,  the  caterpillar, 
looked  like  a  butterfly.  Maybe  she  looked  a 
little  bit  more  like  one,  for  she  had  six  legs  from 

81 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

the  first  to  the  last,  while  Poly  started  out  with 
sixteen  and  ended  up  with  six.  But  it  would  take 
more  than  the  same  number  of  legs  to  make  Nata, 
a  nymph,  look  like  her  mother,  a  dragonfly. 
What  she  did  look  like,  it  would  be  hard  to  say. 
Perhaps,  more  than  anything  else,  she  just  looked 
comical. 

At  first,  of  course,  she  was  tiny,  as  all  things 
are  that  hatch  out  of  small-sized  eggs.  From 
time  to  time,  as  she  grew,  she  had  several  differ- 
ent bathing-suits,  each  one  larger  than  the  one 
before.  The  first  one  did  n't  have  a  sign  of  wings 
on  it;  but  as  she  grew  bigger  and  changed  one 
bathing  suit  after  another,  the  signs  of  wings 
began  to  come,  and  then  to  grow  bigger  with 
each  new  suit.  Not  real  wings,  you  know — just 
signs  of  them  that  are  called  wing-pads,  and 
that  look  like  four  little  flat  flaps  on  her  back. 

When  she  got  large  enough  for  a  change,  a 
new  suit  grew  under  the  one  she  had  been  wear- 
ing, and  then  the  old  one  ripped  far  enough  for 
her  to  step  out  of  the  tear.  She  did  this  under 
water,  so  you  may  think  she  must  have  been 

82 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


washed  very  clean  all  the  time.  But,  you  see,  she 
waded  around  where  it  was  muddy  so  much  that 
it  was  hard  to  tell  what  was  mud  and  what  was 
Nata,  the  mud-covered  nymph;  just  as  it  was 
hard  to  tell  what  was  sand  and  what  was  Carol, 
the  sand-colored  locust.  So  some  of  the  mud 
would  have  to  be  washed  off  before  we  could  see 
that  Nata  was  comical. 

To  begin  with,  she  wore  a  mask  which  covered 
nearly  all  of  her  face,  as  far  up  as  her  feelers  in 
front  and  as  far  as  her  eyes  at  the  side.  This 
mask  was  as  big  for  her  as  one  would  be  for  you 
if  you  make  one  by  holding  your  arms  together 
in  front  of  you,  bent  up  from  the  elbow  so  that 
you  can  cover  your  mouth  and  nose  with  your 
hands.  If  you  do  that,  you  can  throw  your  mask 
out  in  front  of  you  so  that  your  face  shows,  and 
then  draw  back  again  and  cover  it  up.  Nata's 
mask  was  hinged  like  that,  so  that  she  could 
throw  it  out  quickly  and  pull  it  back.  Most  of 
the  time  it  was  folded  up  tightly  over  her  big 
mouth.  It  kept  the  mud  out  when  she  dived 
down  head-first. 

83 


Nata  teas  a  hunter. 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


It  did  something  else,  too.  For  Nata  was  a 
hunter,  and  her  mask  was  a  little  trap  she  car- 
ried around  with  her  all  the  time.  She  hunted 
in  the  water  as  her  mother  hunted  in  the  air, 
and  as  Lampy  hunted  in  the  ground;  only  when 
her  mother  and  Lampy  hunted,  they  went  after 
things.  Nata  did  n't  have  to.  She  sat  still  with 
her  trap  folded  over  her  face,  and  when  a  wrig- 
gler ( that  is  the  name  of  a  young  mosquito  be- 
fore it  has  wings)  or  something  like  that  came 
near,  she  would  just  throw  out  her  trap  and 
pull  her  food  right  up  to  her  mouth.  It  was  a 
pretty  good  trap;  it  never  got  out  of  order,  and 
every  new  bathing  suit  had  hitched  to  it  a  new 
mask  that  was  of  the  same  sort  only  bigger 
than  the  one  before. 

Her  feelers  were  just  above  the  edge  of  the 
mask,  so  that  she  could  move  them  around  in 
the  water.  They  were  slender,  and  the  seven 
joints  in  them  were  all  very  short  so  that  she 
could  not  feel  very  far. 

When  the  top  of  her  head  showed,  the  two 
eyes  stuck  out  round  like  those  of  a  frog.  This 

85 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

made  her  look  very  wide-awake  indeed.  But 
when  the  front  and  side  of  her  head  showed,  her 
eyes  were  different  from  any  other  kind  I  have 
ever  seen.  They  had  wide  stripes  of  pale  green 
and  narrow  ones  of  dark  purple,  and  the  stripes 
were  slanted.  Now  eyes  with  green  and  purple 
stripes  are  pretty  —  very  pretty;  but  they  are 
funny,  too,  and  her  queer  eyes  and  her  queer 
mask,  both  together,  were  what  made  Nata's 
head  so  comical. 

If  her  head  was  a  strange  one,  so  was  her  tail, 
for  that  was  where  the  breathing  tube  was. 

Of  course  no  little  Hexapod  ever  breathes 
through  his  head.  Not  Van  or  Gryl  or  Old 
Bumble  or  any  of  them.  Grown-up  ones,  by  the 
time  they  have  wings,  breathe  through  a  row  of 
little  holes  on  each  side  of  their  bodies.  Most 
baby  Hexapods  breathe  the  same  way,  but  Nata, 
the  nymph,  was  different.  She  had  a  breathing 
tube  with  an  opening  at  the  tip  of  her  tail.  So 
it  was  almost  as  if  she  had  a  mouth  at  each  end 
of  her  body  —  one  to  eat  with  and  one  to  breathe 
with. 

86 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


You  know  that  most  animals  that  live  in  the 
water  have  gills  to  breathe  with.  Nata  did,  too, 
and  her  gills  were  on  the  inside  of  her  breathing 
tube. 

When  you  breathe,  you  have  to  get  oxygen  out 
of  the  air.  When  Nata  breathed,  she  had  to  get 
some  oxygen  that  was  in  the  water.  So  she  would 
draw  the  water  into  her  tube  as  we  draw  air  into 
our  lungs,  and  then  push  it  out  again  as  we  push 
out  the  air. 

So  now  you  can  see  why,  when  Nata  used  to 
dive  down  head-first,  she  left  the  tip  of  her  tail 
up  out  of  the  mud  where  there  was  some  water. 
If  she  had  stayed  tail  down  and  head  up,  she 
would  have  smothered. 

Nata  liked  diving  and  did  a  great  deal  of  it. 
Sometimes  she  would  stand  on  her  head  down 
deep  in  the  mud  for  a  long  time.  It  seemed  to  be 
one  of  her  ways  of  hiding. 

When  she  hid  another  way,  she  would  lie  down 
in  the  mud  and  then  kick  with  all  six  of  her  little 
feet  until  she  scratched  out  a  hole  in  the  mud, 
and  her  body  would  sink  down  deeper  and  deeper 

87 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

until  she  would  be  all  covered  up  except  her  eyes 
and  the  top  of  her  trap  at  her  head-end  and  her 


Nat  was  Nata's  mate. 

breathing  hole  at  her  tail-end.    While  she  was 
hiding  that  way  she  was  usually  hunting. 

The  mud  Nata  played  in  and  hunted  in  was 
at  the  bottom  of  a  pool  a  little  off  at  one  side  in 

88 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


Shanty  Creek.  Now,  you  can  tell  from  this 
something  about  what  part  of  the  country  she 
lived  in,  because  if  it  had  been  in  some  other 
places  the  name  would  have  been  Shanty  Stream 
or  Shanty  Brook. 

Nata  did  not  stay  in  the  mud  at  the  bottom 
of  the  pool  all  the  time.  Now  and  then,  though 
not  often,  she  would  walk  out  near  the  edge 
where  the  water  was  not  deep,  and  put  the  mouth 
of  her  breathing  tube  up  into  the  air;  and  it 
would  look  as  if  she  could  breathe  that  way,  too. 
And  sometimes  she  would  run  about  among  the 
wet  dead  grass-stems  and  other  rubbish  in  the 
water  near  the  edge. 

One  day  she  did  this  after  a  heavy  rain,  when 
there  was  a  flood  that  had  filled  a  hollow  next  the 
pool  she  lived  in.  The  water  spilled  over  from 
the  pool  into  the  hollow,  and  Nata  happened  to 
walk  into  the  hollow  where  there  were  some  good 
things  to  hunt  that  had  gone  over  with  the 
water. 

That  did  very  well  for  a  day  or  two,  and  Nata 
stayed.  She  stayed  so  long  that  the  water  went 

89 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

lower  and  lower,  until  it  no  longer  spilled  over 
from  the  pool  into  the  hollow. 

Now,  the  hollow  was  small,  and  it  did  not 
take  her  many  days  to  trap  all  the  good  things 
there  were  in  it.  After  that,  of  course,  there  was 
nothing  for  her  to  do  but  wait;  for  she  did  not 
know  anything  about  going  from  the  hollow  up 
the  dry  bank  and  over  into  the  pool  again.  She 
could  n't  think  things  out  like  that.  She  had  a 
brain  in  her  little  head,  too,  and  a  wonderful  one 
it  was;  but  it  did  n't  help  her  back  into  the  pool. 

It  could  help  her  wait,  though,  and  that  is 
what  she  did.  She  waited  for  seven  days,  and 
nothing  —  not  so  much  as  one  mosquito  wrig- 
gler—  got  into  her  trap.  And  all  this  time  the 
water  was  sinking  lower  and  lower  in  the  little 
hollow,  until  by  the  end  of  the  week  there  was 
not  more  than  a  cupful  left.  Then  it  rained  until 
there  was  as  much  as  would  fill  a  dishpan. 

Nata  still  waited,  with  her  trap  held  up  closed 
about  her  hungry  mouth,  for  days  and  days  and 
nights  and  nights,  until  another  week  went  by, 
and  she  had  nothing  to  eat  even  then. 

90 


NATA,  THE  NYMPH 


By  that  time  the  water  was  gone  from  the  hol- 
low. There  was  n't  enough  left  to  fill  a  thimble! 

The  dirt  at  the  bottom  was  still  soft  and  wet, 
though,  and  there  Nata  stayed,  all  alone  and 
very  hungry. 

Poor  little  Nata,  waiting  in  the  mud!  Four 
days  went  by  while  she  had  just  air  to  draw  into 
her  breathing  tube,  for  all  the  water  was  gone. 
So  there  were  four  more  days  to  add  to  the  other 
fourteen  without  food! 

And  Nata  still  waited.  Do  you  wonder  how 
she  lived  so  long?  Perhaps  it  was  partly  because 
she  did  n't  tire  herself  all  out  fretting.  She  waited 
quietly  most  of  the  time,  and  rested.  Partly  too, 
it  was  because  she  was  strong  and  because  she 
was  a  hunter,  and  very  often  hunters  have  to 
wait  a  long  time  between  meals.  But  eighteen 
days  was  longer  than  usual,  and  unless  some- 
thing happened  to  get  Nata  back  into  her  pool 
she  would  —  Oh  dear,  oh  dear!  what  would  be- 
come of  her? 

But  something  did  happen.  It  was  rain!  There 
was  thunder  and  lightning  with  it,  but  Nata 

91 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

didn't  mind  that.  And  there  was  a  flood  —  a 
nice  big  one  that  spilled  the  pool  over  into  the 
hollow. 

In  a  little  while  after  that,  Nata  found  her 
way  back  to  her  old  hunting-ground  in  the  mud 
at  the  bottom  of  the  pool.  Perhaps  she  felt  the 
motion  of  things  swimming  about  in  the  pool. 
Perhaps  she  smelled  something  that  tempted  her 
back.  Perhaps  she  just  went  walking  around  and 
happened  to  get  home  again  as  she  happened  to 
get  lost. 

Whatever  way  it  was,  she  had  a  good  time  all 
the  rest  of  the  days  she  was  a  nymph.  She  caught 
plenty  of  food  in  her  trap  —  nice  tender  juicy 
food.  She  played  in  the  mud,  sometimes  diving 
down  in  it  head  first,  and  sometimes  kicking  it 
out  from  under  her  so  that  the  trap  on  her  head 
was  where  she  could  use  it  as  well  as  the  opening 
of  the  breathing  tube  in  her  tail. 

Then  one  day,  right  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
fun  of  diving  and  wading  and  hunting  —  one  day 
she  stopped  doing  the  things  that  she  had  done 
all  her  life,  and  walked  up  out  of  the  water  to 

92 


Well  —  She  came  out  qf  Nata's  bathing  suit. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

the  shore  of  the  pool,  and  climbed  a  little  way 
up  the  stem  of  a  plant,  and  then  pretty  soon  all 
there  was  left  of  Nata,  the  nymph,  was  an  empty 
bathing  suit,  just  her  shape,  clinging  to  the  plant. 

Nata  the  Nymph  is  no  more.  She  has  gone, 
leaving  her  water-clothes  all  whole  and  good  ex- 
cept the  opening  at  the  back  where  she  pulled 
herself  out  of  them.  They  look  as  if  they  were 
left  waiting  for  her  to  come  and  slip  into  them 
again. 

When  will  she  come  back  and  live  in  her  pool? 

Ah,  Nata  can  never  do  that.  Look,  and  you 
will  know  why! 

See  —  flying  along  the  bank  of  Shanty  Creek, 
a  beautiful  creature  with  four  wonderful  strong 
wings  and  with  eyes  that  gleam  like  living  jewels! 
Oh,  now  she  has  stopped  and  is  resting  in  the 
sunshine  near  Nat. 

Well--  She  came  out  of  Nata's  bathing  suit. 
Do  you  think  she  will  ever  need  it  again? 


VII 
LAMPY'S  FOURTH  0'  JULY 

No  ONE  had  ever  given  Lampy  so  much  as  a 
penny.  He  had  never  earned  any  money.  He 
had  never  found  any.  Here  it  was  the  Fourth  o' 
July,  and  he  could  n't  buy  even  one  fire-cracker! 
Not  any  of  his  little  gang  of  Will-o '-the- Wisps 
had  fire-crackers  either,  so  you  might  think  that 
they  were  going  to  have  a  dull  time  of  it  that 
night. 

For  the  Will-o '-the- Wisps  had  a  habit,  during 
the  summer,  of  meeting  every  evening  about  the 
time  the  stars  came  out,  and  having  a  frolic  to- 
gether. They  never  did  any  harm  in  the  world. 
If  the  policeman  saw  them  darting  about  after 
the  curfew  rang,  he  just  smiled  and  never  thought 
of  such  a  thing  as  sending  them  to  bed. 

Why,  indeed,  should  Lampy  go  to  bed  by 
night?  He  rested  all  day,  like  a  little  owl.  Of 
course  it  is  all  right  for  some  folk  to  sleep  while 
it  is  dark.  Van  and  Poly  and  Jack  and  Nata 

95 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

and  Carol  are  awake  all  day,  and  so  they  need 
to  rest  at  night.  They  are  made  that  way,  just 
as  chickadees  and  robins  are.  Some  flowers  are 
like  that,  too,  and  shut  up  their  pretty  eyes  as 
soon  as  it  grows  dark. 

But  Lampy!  My,  no!  Miss  the  night-time? 
Sleep  while  the  Big  Dipper  in  the  sky  whirled 
slowly  around  the  steady  North  Star?  Doze 
while  the  evening  primrose  opened  its  lovely  yel- 
low cups  of  nectar  and  filled  the  air  with  sweet 
smells?  Nap  while  the  new  moon  sailed  the 
skies  like  a  little  boat? 

Why,  even  the  bat,  the  cunning  flying  mouse, 
came  out  to  enjoy  the  night  air.  Gryl  was  fid- 
dling merrily  in  the  fields.  Luna  \vas  floating, 
like  a  fairy  robed  in  white  and  green,  through 
the  woodland. 

Oh,  no!  Lampy  could  not  miss  the  night. 
Not  that  he  listened  to  GryPs  music,  or  smelled 
the  evening  primrose,  or  watched  the  beautiful 
Luna,  or  even  looked  at  the  sky!  But  the  night 
was  good  to  him  even  without  these  joys.  He 
was  a  part  of  it,  and,  besides,  the  whole  gang  of 

96 


LAMPY'S  FOURTH  O'  JULY 


Oho!  Here  was  Lumpy . 

Will-o'-the-Wisps  would  be  out  for  a  Fourth-o'- 
July  dance. 

And  the  dance,  just  think  of  it,  the  dance  was 
going  to  be  in  the  air! 

A  Fourth-o'-July  dance  without  fireworks, 
though  —  dearie,  dearie,  me! 

97 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Oho!  Here  was  Lampy!  He  had  crept  out  of 
bed  at  dusk,  had  lifted  his  upper  wings,  which 
covered  the  ones  he  used  for  flying,  had  shaken 
the  wrinkles  out  of  his  thin  under  ones,  and  here 
he  was,  ready  for  the  dance.  And  here  was  Jack- 
o '-Lantern,  and  here  was  Wah-wah-taysee,  and 
here  were  Tinker  Bell  and  Star-Light  and  Eye- 
Bright  and  Ray  and  Beam  and  Flash  and  Gleam 
-here  were,  indeed,  the  whole  gang  of  Will-o'- 
the-Wisps!  And  every  one  of  them  carried  a 
candle. 

Over  the  marsh  the  mist  is  white, 
The  owl  is  calling  through  the  night; 
While,  like  a  flock  of  dancing  stars, 
The  Will-o'-the- Wisps  are  taking  flight. 

It  was  a  dance  to  be  happy  about,  for  there 
was  a  time  when  none  of  these  Will-o'-the- Wisps 
had  any  wings;  and,  as  their  six  little  tiptoes 
were  not  made  for  dancing,  they  had  kept  very 
close  to  the  ground.  So  close,  indeed,  that  they 
had  lived  right  in  it  all  the  while  they  were 
growing  up. 

No,    Lampy   had    not    always    been    flying 

98 


LAMPY'S  FOURTH  O'  JULY 

through  the  air  at  night  and  resting  wherever 
he  happened  to  be  by  day.  He  had  stayed 
where  his  mother  had  put  him. 

His  mother,  whose  name  was  Firefly,  wore 
over  her  head  something  that  looked  like  a  flat 
red-and-black  hat,  and  her  eyes  were  hidden 
under  the  broad  yellow  brim.  She  had  a  candle 
very  much  like  Lampy's,  only  not  quite  the 
same  in  shape;  and  her  wings  were  dark,  with  a 
light  yellow  edge  all  round.  Like  Lampy,  she 
had  rested  by  day,  and  had  flown  with  her  kind 
at  night. 

Her  candle,  it  is  thought,  was  a  signal  to  other 
firefly  beetles  to  come  and  join  the  dance,  for 
they  flew  in  large  flocks  near  the  swamps  and 
over  the  low  meadows.  Her  bright  light  did  not 
give  a  steady  glow  like  the  North  Star,  but 
flashed  and  then  wrent  out  and  flashed  again;  as 
you  can  make  a  little  pocket-light  do  by  pressing 
it.  So  she  could  give  " wig-wag"  signals  to  her 
friends;  and,  as  it  was  night,  of  course  a  flashing 
candle  was  better  than  a  flag. 

It  is  thought,  too,  that  her  candle  was  a  warn- 

99 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

ing  to  the  night  birds .  It  showed  them  j  list  where 
she  was,  and  they  need  n't  swallow  her  up  if  they 
did  n't  like  the  taste  of  fireflies;  just  as  Poly's 
bright  dress  showed  the  day  folk  where  she  was, 
so  that  they  need  not  meet  her  unless  they 
wished  to. 

Well,  Firefly  did  not  spend  all  the  time  in 
dancing  at  night  and  in  resting  when  it  was  day. 
She  had  some  eggs  to  take  care  of,  and  no  mat- 
ter how  they  may  have  looked  to  others,  they 
were  as  good  as  gold  to  her. 

She  buried  her  treasure -- Lampy  and  the 
other  little  eggs.  So  their  cradles  were  right  in 
the  dirt. 

That  was  a  handy  place  to  be  in,  as  Lampy 
found  when  he  hatched  and  crept  out  of  the  egg. 
For  he  was  born  a  hunter,  and  had  to  catch 
every  bit  of  his  own  food. 

Underground  there  were  as  many  little  things 
that  Lampy  liked  to  eat  as  there  are  on  top  of 
the  ground  for  Biddy  and  her  chicks,  when  they 
go  hunting,  or  in  the  air  for  Nata,  when  she  is 
grown  up  and  flies  about,  or  in  the  water  for 

100 


LAMPY'S  FOURTH  O'  JULY 


Like  a  flock  of  dancing  stars  the  JVill-o' -the- Wisps  are  taking  flight. 

her,  when  she  is  a  nymph  and  hides  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  pond. 

Food  enough  in  the  world  for  everybody,  if 
everybody  goes  about  getting  it  in  the  right  way; 
and  the  right  way  for  Lampy  was  hunting  in  the 
ground! 

So  he  dug  little  holes  wherever  he  went,  and 
made  little  caves  and  crept  through  them,  and 
hunted  and  hunted  and  hunted  all  the  time  he 
was  growing  up.  There,  too,  underground  in  his 

101 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

own  dark  hole,  he  changed  his  clothes  when  they 
felt  too  tight. 

He  was  a  queer-looking  little  thing,  with  a 
small  head,  and  then  a  lot  of  joints  for  the  rest 
of  his  body  that  were  very  much  alike,  except 
that  the  tail  one  had  a  little  tool  on  it,  and  the 
three  nearest  his  head  had  each  a  pair  of  short 
legs. 

But  one  day  he  stopped  looking  like  that. 
This  was  after  he  slipped  out  of  his  last  suit  of 
jointed  clothes  and  went  to  sleep  as  soon  as  the}7 
were  off.  For  little  Lampy  had  grown  to  the 
time  when  he  was  to  hunt  no  more  through  holes 
in  the  ground.  He  was  going  to  sleep,  and  then 
he  was  going  to  waken  and  have  wings  to  fly 
with  and  a  candle  to  flash  in  the  night-air. 
Think  of  that! 

So  he  slept  in  the  earth,  and  his  bed  under 
him  was  good  clean  dirt,  and  his  blanket  over 
him  was  good  clean  dirt,  too. 

Then,  when  it  was  the  right  time  in  the  sum- 
mer, he  climbed  up  out  of  the  ground.  And  that 
evening  he  flew  over  the  low  meadow  to  the 

102 


LAMPY'S  FOURTH  O'  JULY 

marsh.  There  he  found  Jack-o' -Lantern  and 
Wah-wah-taysee  and  Tinker  Bell  and  Star-Light 
and  Eye-Bright  and  Ray  and  Beam  and  Flash 
and  Gleam. 

They  all  danced  in  the  air  with  their  wings; 
and  their  candles,  twinkling  in  the  dark,  were 
more  beautiful  than  any  other  lights  that  could 
be  seen  —  except  the  stars. 

Oh,  is  it,  then,  a  fairy  sprite 
That  frolics  with  the  elves  at  night? 
The  Will-o'-the- Wisps,  on  dancing  wings, 
But  wake  the  dark  with  their  delight. 

Way,  way  off  over  the  city,  the  sky-rockets  and 
other  fireworks  showed  where  a  crowd  of  men 
were  having  their  Fourth  o'  July,  too;  but,  do 
you  know,  with  all  their  money,  they  had  not 
been  able  to  buy  anything  so  lovely  as  the  dance 
of  the  Will-o'-the- Wisps  over  the  marsh! 

For  Lampy's  candle  was  a  secret,  and  no  man 
has  ever  been  able  to  make  one  like  it.  Not  in 
this  country  or  way  over  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world  in  China,  or  anywhere,  has  any  man  ever 

103 


And  rrcry  one  of  them  carried  a  candle. 


LAMPY'S  FOURTH  O'  JULY 

made  a  candle  such  as  Lampy  and  the  other  Will- 
o'-the- Wisps  carried  that  night  as  they  danced 
in  the  air  above  the  marsh. 

The  most  wonderful  thing  about  it  was  that 
it  was  a  cool  light.  You  know  that  you  cannot 
put  your  hand  into  the  flame  in  the  fireplace 
without  getting  burned.  The  rays  of  the  sun  are 
warm  even  when  they  have  come  many  miles  to 
us.  You  know  that  the  light  from  kerosene  or 
alcohol  is  hot  enough  to  cook  your  dinner  with, 
if  there  is  an  oven  over  it. 

But  Lampy's  candle  was  pure  light,  with  no 
heat.  It  was  ten  times  as  good  a  light  as  electric- 
ity makes,  and  fifty  times  as  good  as  gas;  and 
it  was  so  cool  that  it  did  not  burn  his  wings 
when  they  were  folded  right  over  it.  It  did  not 
even  make  the  end  of  his  body,  where  he  carried 
it,  one  bit  warmer  than  his  head. 

Think  of  a  light  like  that  for  a  hot  summer 
night !  Think  of  Lampy,  without  a  penny  in  the 
bank,  owning  a  candle  such  as  the  richest  man  in 
the  world  cannot  buy!  Think  of  having  a  secret 
that  the  wisest  man  never  has  guessed! 

105 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

Mind,  I  do  not  say  that  no  one  ever  will  find 
out  the  secret  of  Lampy's  candle.  Maybe  you 
will  yourself,  when  you  are  grown  up.  Who 
knows?  Just  because  no  man  or  woman  ever  has, 
there  is  no  reason  to  say  that  no  one  ever  can. 

If  you  ever  do  learn  how  to  make  a  pure  light 
that  is  not  hot  or  even  warm,  what  will  you  do 
with  it  ?  Will  you  keep  your  secret  all  your  days  ? 
Will  you  sell  it  and  be  very  rich?  Will  you  give 
it  to  poor  people  in  hot  cities,  that  they  may 
have  a  light  that  is  cool?  Will  you  give  it  to  the 
sick,  who  should  not  have  a  warm  light  near 
their  heads  while  they  read?  Or  will  you  take  it 
as  Lampy  did,  and  dance  in  the  night  with  your 
friends,  making  the  dark  earth  beautiful  with 
your  candles  as  the  dark  sky  is  beautiful  with 
stars?  And  will  you  sing  as  you  go: — 

"The  flowers  of  dusk  are  gleaming  bright 
And  give  their  sweetness  to  the  night; 
While  day-folk  sleep  the  dark  away, 
We  dance  by  pretty  candle-light!" 


VIII 


CAROL 

HER  real  name  was  Carolina  Grasshopper,  but 
we  will  call  her  Carol  for  short. 

Carol  was  sitting  in  the  sandy  path,  so  near 
the  road  that,  when  any  one  passed,  she  had  to 
move  out  of  the  way.  This  did  not  matter  at  all, 
for  one  place  in  the  sand  was  as  good  as  another 
to  Carol. 

It  was  noon-time  of  the  hottest  day  of  the 


^-•'  ,'"®Mfe^ft^^ 

•   •  i>*^|y  "Vv-> 

-.'•   :^J3M**$md 


-^?= —  -  /• 

^     -//  -.: 


It  teas  noontide  of  the  hottest  day  of  the  summer. 
107 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

summer,  and  the  sun  shone  down  on  her  back 
and  head,  and  the  sand  she  was  sitting  on  was 
almost  hot  enough  to  hurt  your  hand.  It  was 
the  sort  of  day,  in  fact,  when  a  person,  if  he  does 
not  put  a  damp  cloth  under  his  hat,  is  likely  to 
have  a  sunstroke. 

But  Carol  did  not  even  have  a  hat  on. 

As  for  leaving  that  hot  sand  and  having  a  nice 
cool  wade  in  the  little  brook  that  sang  "Bip-po 
bap-po"  down  through  the  shady  woods  to  the 
river  not  far  away  —  why  Carol  would  never  have 
done  such  a  thing  in  the  world!  Had  her  mother 
not  sat  in  the  sand  by  the  side  of  the  road  one 
year  ago;  and  had  not  her  two  grand-mothers 
done  the  same  thing  two  years  ago?  And  had 
her  father  and  her  two  grandfathers  ever  found 
any  better  place  than  sand  in  the  sun  on  a  hot 
summer  day?  What  was  good  enough  for  them 
was  good  enough  for  her. 

So  there  she  sat,  looking  about  the  color  of  a 
tiny  heap  of  sand,  just  as  her  mother  and  grand- 
mother and  great-grandmother  and  great-great- 
grandmother,  and  all  the  rest  as  far  back  as  you 

108 


CAROL 

can  count,  had  sat  and  looked  before  her.  You 
might  say  it  was  a  habit  of  her  family. 

Now  Carol  had  two  little  fans,  tucked  down, 
one  on  each  side  of  her.   They  were  pretty  when 


Now  Carol  had  t-^'u  little  Jims. 

they  were  spread  out  —  dull  soft  black,  with 
yellow  borders. 

I  once  knew7  a  girl  who  made  one  the  same  size 
out  of  black  and  yellow  tissue-paper  for  her  Doll 
Jane,  and  it  \vas  as  cunning  a  fan  as  you  could 
wish  to  see  at  a  doll  party. 

But  Carol  was  not  at  a  party,  and  she  was  not 

109 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

using  her  fans.  She  had  them  all  folded  neatly 
under  their  brown  covers,  which  kept  them  from 
getting  worn  and  torn.  She  never  once  fanned 
herself  with  either  of  them! 

With  these  thin  black-and-yellow  dainty  things 
tucked  out  of  sight  beneath  the  tough  covers  that 
made  a  sort  of  roof  over  her  back,  there  was 
nothing  to  show  where  Carol  sat.  A  little  sand- 
colored  grasshopper  sitting  on  the  sand  —  that 
was  all. 

Why,  you  could  have  stepped  on  her  easily 
and  never  have  known  it!  That  is,  you  could,  if 
she  had  not  seen  you  coming;  for  Carol's  eyes 
were  very  quick  to  see  anything  that  moved 
toward  her.  If  things  stood  still  like  trees,  she 
did  not  bother  about  them.  For  nothing  could 
catch  her  unless  it  came  nearer  and  nearer  and 
nearer.  But  if  old  Rover  pattered  down  the  road, 
or  a  bird  flew  close  overhead  and  made  a  shadow, 
or  a  child  ran  by,  then  quick  as  a  flash  Carol 
would  lift  her  fan-covers  out  of  the  way  and 
spread  her  fans  like  little  sails  and  fly  off  with 
them.  For  her  black-and-yellow  fans  were  wings! 

no 


CAROL 

And  when  you  saw  her  fly  away,  perhaps  you 
thought  she  was  a  butterfly.  Maybe  you  thought 
she  was  a  butterfly  like  Van,  with  dark  wings 
and  yellow  borders.  Maybe  you  were  the  little 
girl  or  boy  who  chased  after  her  along  the  road, 
and  looked  right  at  her  and  did  n't  see  her  at  all; 
for  you  were  trying  to  find  something  with  black- 
and-yellow  wings,  and  Carol  was  just  a  sand- 
colored  grasshopper  sitting  in  the  sand. 

Well,  if  it  was  not  you,  it  was  some  other  girl 
and  boy;  and  Carol  led  them  half  a  mile  along 
the  roadside,  fooling  them  time  after  time  by 
showing  them  her  broad  wings  in  flight  and  then 
quickly  hiding  them  under  their  covers,  when 
she  stopped  to  rest.  And  by-and-by  the  children 
grew  so  tired  that  they  went  off  into  the  woods 
and  found  the  brook,  and  waded  there  until  they 
were  cool. 

On  and  on  flew  Carol,  a  little  way  at  a  time, 
now  this  way  and  now  that,  as  dogs  and  chil- 
dren and  horses  and  men  sometimes  came  up  the 
road  and  sometimes  down.  And  once  Carol  was 
scared  into  the  woods  by  a  funny  old  cow  with 

111 


Perhaps  you  thought  she  teas  a  butterfly. 


CAROL 

a  crumpled  horn,  and  the  first  thing  she  knew, 
she  was  sitting  on  some  pretty  leaves  on  the 
cool  damp  ground.  But  her  brown  sand-colored 
body  showed  very  plainly  on  the  green,  and  she 
did  n't  like  the  shady  woods,  and  when  she 
started  for  the  roadside  she  bumped  up  against 
some  bent  grass-stems  and  fell  down.  Then  she 
tried  jumping  out, — for  two  of  her  legs  were 
big  and  strong  for  hopping;  but  she  kept  blun- 
dering against  stems  that  were  in  the  way.  At 
last,  she  crept  along  more  slowly  without  trying 
to  fly  or  jump,  and  so  got  back  to  the  roadside, 
where,  although  many  things  passed  by,  none 
could  see  her  in  the  sand;  and  where,  although 
she  had  often  to  hop  and  fly,  there  were  no  grass- 
stems  above  her  to  get  tangled  in. 

But  you  must  n't  laugh  too  much  at  little 
Carol,  baking  herself  in  the  sunshine.  If  you  had 
spent  the  winter  where  she  did,  perhaps  it  would 
take  you  all  summer  to  get  warm,  too. 

For   Carol's    mother — just   think   of    it!- 
poked  every  egg  she  had  down  as  far  as  she 
could  reach  into  the  ground,  and  poured  over 

113 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

them  a  sort  of  froth  that  hardened  about  them. 
Carol  herself  was  the  very  last  egg  her  mother 
pushed  down,  so  that  she  was  on  top  of  her 
brother  and  sister  eggs,  which  lay  under  her  in 
slanting  rows.  But  even  if  she  was  on  top,  she 
had  to  stay  there  all  winter  long,  and  the  ground 
froze  as  solid  as  a  cake  of  ice,  and  part  of  the 
time  the  weather  was  colder  than  zero;  and 
though  the  snow  lay  over  her  like  a  thick  blanket, 
it  was  a  cold  bed  for  all  that,  and  it  is  no  wonder 
that  Carol  did  n't  hatch  for  months  and  months. 

When  she  did,  poor  little  baby,  she  was  buried 
alive  under  ground,  and  had  a  hard  time  of  it 
pushing  and  pushing  and  pushing  up;  for  she 
was  the  top  of  the  brood  and  had  to  open  up  the 
way  for  her  brothers  and  sisters  as  well  as  for 
herself. 

But  the  world  she  found  when  she  crept  out 
of  that  hole  was  worth  working  to  get  into,  for 
it  was  spring-time  and  the  sun  shone  and  there 
were  some  warm  stones  near  by;  and  so  Baby 
Carol  hopped  about  and  ate  whatever  she  wanted, 
and  was,  so  far  as  anyone  could  see,  quite  happy. 

114 


CAROL 

All  that,  of  course,  was  long  before  she  could 
fly;  for  a  grasshopper  never  has  any  wings  until 
she  is  grown  up,  though  every  time  she  moults 
her  brown  skin,  the  little  pads,  that  will  some 
day  be  fans  and  fan-covers,  grow  bigger  and 
bigger. 

Yes,  that  was  all  many  weeks  ago,  and  Carol 
was  now  grown  up  and  old  enough  to  have  a 
mate. 

So  we  must  not  be  surprised  to  see  Carl  Grass- 
hopper talking  pleasantly  with  her  one  day  when 
they  met  on  a  large  rocky  place  in  the  sun.  But 
you  may  be  surprised  to  know  where  he  kept  his 
voice,  for  though  Carl  had  a  throat  and  a  mouth 
and  lips,  he  used  them  to  eat  with  and  never 
spoke  a  word  through  them  in  his  life.  No,  when 
Carl  talked  to  Carol  he  did  it  by  rubbing  his 
great  hind-legs  against  his  sides;  and  this  seemed 
to  her  the  most  natural  way  in  all  the  world  to 
be  spoken  to,  for  it  was  the  way  her  father  had 
talked  to  her  mother.  It  was  a  gentle  scraping 
sort  of  sound,  and  you  would  have  to  be  near 
to  notice  it.  But  Carol  was  sitting  on  the  same 

115 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

stone,  and  her  ears,  which  she  kept  in  as  queer 
a  place  as  Carl  did  his  voice,  could  no  doubt 
hear  him  very  well. 

Carl  could  sing,  too,  and  his  song  was  louder 
than  his  talking,  and  he  had  such  a  pretty  way 
of  doing  it,  that  poets,  who  love  pretty  things, 
have  sometimes  sung  about  Carl's  song  in  their 
verses.  That  makes  a  sort  of  double  song,  does 
n't  it? 

When  Carl  wanted  to  sing,  he  would  spring 
into  the  air  about  three  feet,  and  hover  almost 
in  one  place,  with  his  wings  spread  and  flutter- 
ing so  fast  that  they  made  a  clacking  sound 
where  the  edge  of  the  fans  clicked  against  the 
edge  of  the  covers. 

And  if  poets  have  liked  his  song,  is  it  strange 
if  Carol  was  pleased? 

But  Carol  could  not  spend  all  summer  listen- 
ing to  music.  She  must  hurry  and  get  her  eggs 
all  buried  before  cold  weather  came.  Carl  did 
not  help  his  mate  dig  a  single  hole;  but  you  must 
not  blame  him  for  this,  for  his  father  had  never 
dug  a  hole  nor  his  grandfather  nor  his  great- 
lie 


CAROL 

grandfather  nor  his  great-great-grandfather,  nor 
any  father  as  far  back  as  you  can  count.  So  you 
see  it  was  not  the  fashion  in  Carl's  family  to  dig 
holes  for  their  mates  to  lay  their  eggs  in. 

And,  after  all,  Carol  had  plenty  of  time  to  do 
it  herself,  and  the  tip  of  her  body  was  all  fitted 
up  with  the  nicest  little  tool  for  boring  into  the 
ground  —  the  four  parts  of  it  pushed  down  just 
right,  and  I  think  she  really  liked  to  use  this  little 
boring  tool.  And  of  course  she  really  liked  to  put 
her  precious  eggs  there  in  slanting  rows  in  the 
soft  froth  that  soon  hardened  about  them,  keep- 
ing them  clean  and  safe  all  winter. 

So  her  own  queer  little  nest  was  left  in  the 
earth  just  as  her  mother's  had  been, — that  good 
old  Earth  that  takes  care  of  what  is  planted  in 
her, — the  same  good  old  Earth  to  whom  we  owe, 
in  many  ways,  our  own  life,  just  as  surely  as 
Carol's  babies  owe  theirs  to  her:  even  those  of  us 
who  are  far  from  her,  in  a  city  flat  way  up  in  the 
air,  instead  of  down  by  the  country  roadside,  like 
a  grasshopper  in  the  sun, 


IX 
ANN  GUSTI'S  CIRCUS 

ANN  GUSTI  was  chewing  a  buttercup-leaf.  If 
you  did  such  a  thing  yourself,  I  dare  say  it  would 
make  your  tongue  smart  a  bit.  But  Ann  Gusti 
belonged  to  a  family  of  blister  beetles,  and  a 
peppery  salad  tasted  very  good  to  her.  In  fact, 
she  liked  it  better  than  any  other  food.  For  this 
reason  some  people  name  her  Buttercup  Beetle. 
Besides  that,  she  is  often  called  Oil  Beetle,  be- 
cause she  can  drop  oil  out  of  her  joints.  And 
when  she  was  a  baby,  just  hatched  from  an  egg, 
she  was  so  funny  that  people  said  she  was  a 
Tri-un-gu-lin,  and  every  time  she  changed  her 
clothes  somebody  gave  her  a  new  name.  So  you 
see  that  by  the  time  she  was  grown  up  she  had 
plenty  of  them;  but  I  like  Ann  Gusti  best  of  all. 

Before  she  climbed  up  the  buttercup-stem  she 
put  on  the  very  last  dress  she  was  ever  going  to 
have,  and  a  pretty  one  it  was,  too.  It  fitted  her 
nicely,  for,  of  course,  like  all  beetle  dresses,  it 

118 


ANN  GUSTI'S  CIRCUS 


,grew  on  her  body  inside  the  dress  she  Wore  be- 
fore; and  when  it  was  ready  for  her  to  use,  she 
crept  out  through  a  rip  in  the  old  one;  and  there 
she  was,  all  spick-and-span! 

It  was  a  lovely  dark-blue  color,  with  some 
broad  black  stripes  that  were  as  shiny  as  satin. 
And  on  the  back  were 
two  wing-covers  that  did 
very  well  for  trimming, 
though  they  were  not  of 
much  use,  for  there  were 
no  wings  under  them. 

No,  poor  Ann  Gusti 
never  had  a  ride  with  her 
own  wings  in  her  life. 
But  perhaps  we  need 
not  be  sorry  for  her,  be- 
cause she  had  one  good 
ride  through  the  air  for  Bef°rc  she  climbed  up  the  buttercup 

.  stem  she  put  on  her  last  dress. 

all  that,  one  day  when 

she  was  a  baby  and  her  name  was  Tri-un-gu-lin. 
As  it  was  one  of  the  most  wonderful  rides  in  the 
world,  that  was  enough  to  last  her  a  lifetime. 

119 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

This  was  the  way  it  happened.  When  Ann 
Gusti  hatched  out  of  an  egg,  she  was  hungry. 
Of  course  she  was.  All  babies  are  hungry,  or  else 
they  would  n't  eat  and  grow  up;  and  most  insect 
babies  can  find  something  to  eat  very  near  at 
hand. 

But  Ann  Gusti  could  n't.  That  was  before 
she  learned  to  eat  buttercup-leaves! 

In  fact,  there  was  only  one  sort  of  food  in  the 
whole  wide  world  that  would  agree  with  her 
when  she  was  wee  and  wore  her  first  baby  clothes. 
Now  that  food  was  way,  way  off  in  a  bee's  nest, 
and  she  did  n't  know  where  the  nest  was.  Most 
babies  in  a  fix  like  that  would  have  starved  to 
death. 

But  Ann  Gusti  did  n't!  Oh,  no!  She  just 
climbed  up  into  a  flower  and  waited. 

By-and-by  a  bee  came  buzzing  to  the  flower, 
and  then,  quick  as  a  flash,  wee  Ann  Gusti  grabbed 
hold  of  the  hairs  on  Mother  Bee's  leg;  and  that 
is  how  she  got  her  ride  and  that  is  how  she  got 
her  breakfast.  For  she  clung  tightly  to  the  hairs, 
and  off  she  rode  wherever  Mother  Bee  went,  from 

120 


ANN  GUSTI'S  CIRCUS 


pretty  flower  to  pretty  flower,  and  at  last  right 
into  the  bee's  nest,  where  she  made  herself  at 
home  and  liked  the  food  and  stayed. 

If  you  know  a  smarter  baby  than  Ann  Gusti, 
or  a  stranger  ride  to  take  before  the  first  break- 
fast, I  hope  you  '11  write  a  story  about  it. 

So  with  a  ride  like  that  to  start  life  with,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  Ann  Gusti  grew  up  to  be  a 
clown  in  a  circus. 

Did  you  think  that  a  circus  had  to  be  under 
a  cloth  tent,  with  tigers  and  lions  in  cages,  and 
trained  horses  and  dogs  there  to  do  tricks? 

Well,  Jack  and  Jane  liked  that  kind,  too;  but 
they  went  to  a  different  sort  of  circus  with  Uncle 
David  one  day  as  a  special  treat,  and  they  both 
said  his  kind  is  the  best  there  is. 

The  top  of  the  tent  \vas  the  prettiest  blue  you 
can  ever  see,  and  at  one  side  there  were  trees  with 
the  earliest  ripe  apples  on  them,  and  at  another 
there  was  a  river  with  a  rocky  bank  and  a  great 
flat  stone  with  a  bonfire  burning  on  it;  and  at  a 
third  side  there  was  a  meadow;  but  neither  Jack 
nor  Jane  could  tell  what  was  on  the  fourth  side, 

121 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

because  Ann  Gusti  was  playing  her  funny  tricks 
in  the  meadow;  and  so  that  was  as  far  as  they  got. 

As  I  said  to  begin  with,  Ann  Gusti  was  chew- 
ing a  buttercup-leaf.  She  was  right  in  plain 
sight  at  first,  but  the  minute  the  toe  of  Uncle 
David's  boot  hit  the  buttercup-stem  she  was 
gone.  Now  you  know  she  could  n't  fly,  because 
she  had  no  wings  under  her  wing-covers;  and  if 
a  bee  had  come  along  just  then  it  would  have 
done  no  good,  for  by  this  time  she  was  grown 
up  and  much,  much  bigger  than  a  bee;  so  she 
could  n't  have  ridden  off  that  way,  either. 

After  a  hunt  among  the  leaves  she  was  found 
on  the  ground,  lying  on  one  side  with  her  head 
held  so  close  to  her  body  that  her  yellow  neck  did 
not  show.  Her  little  feelers  were  reaching  up, 
but  they  were  still;  and  her  legs  looked  limp,  and 
there  were  oily  drops  coming  out  at  the  joints. 

"  Oh! "  said  Jane,  " she's  dropped  down  dead! " 

That  shows  how  Ann  Gusti  fooled  them!  That 
shows  how  well  she  could  do  her  trick !  No  trained 
dog  could  have  looked  deader  if  he  had  prac- 
tised a  year! 

122 


ANN  GUSTI'S  CIRCUS 


The  children  lay  down  on  the  ground  with 
their  chins  in  their  hands,  and  waited  and  waited 
and  waited.    Just  before  their  necks  ached  so 
that    they    could  n't 
wait  another  minute, 
Ann  Gusti  wiggled  her 
toes.  Then  she  moved 
her    feelers  the   least 
little  bit.    Then  after         Ann  Gusti  wggied  her  toes. 
a  while,  as  everything 

was  quiet,  she  got  up  on  her  feet  and  climbed 
the  buttercup-stem  and  went  on  chewing  a  leaf 
as  if  there  was  nothing  at  all  the  matter  with 
her.  And  there  was  n't.  She  was  just  fooling 
them.  That  was  Ann  Gusti's  trick. 

" She's  a  clown!"  said  Jack. 

And  that  is  how  it  happened  that  Ann  Gusti 
had  a  circus  on  Labor  Day  before  school  began, 
when  the  friends  of  Jack  and  Jane  could  come. 

The  children  played  the  woodshed  was  a  tent. 
Beside  the  tent  door  there  was  a  sign  made  by 
cutting  big  letters  out  of  a  newspaper  and  past- 
ing them  on  card-board  to  make  the  words:— 

123 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

SIDE  SHOW 

THREE    WONDERS    OF    THE    WORLD 

1.  ANN  GUSTI,  THE  FAMOUS  FAT  CLOWN 

2.  THE  THINNEST  LIVING  SKELETON 

3.  THE  SPRY  AMERICAN  ACROBAT 

Inside  there  were  three  cages  for  the  animals. 
Ann  Gusti  was  in  the  middle  one,  chewing  but- 
tercup-leaves. And  when  Jack  touched  her  and 
said,  "Now,  you  are  a  dead  beetle,"  she  would 
tumble  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  cage  and  play 
she  was  dead — every  single  time.  Good  Ann 
Gusti — she  knew  her  trick  and  did  it,  just  as  her 
mother  and  father  and  all  the  Gusti  family  had 
done  as  far  back  as  any  one  can  remember!  They 
were  all  clowns,  those  Gustis. 

The  minute  they  hatched  out  of  their  eggs 
they  were  ready  for  their  bee-riding  trick;  and 
then  late  in  life,  when  they  wore  wing-covers  that 
did  n't  cover  any  wings,  they  played  they  were 
dead  before  they  were.  In  fact  they  had  all  saved 

124 


ANN  GUSTI'S  CIRCUS 


their  lives  many  a  time  by  playing  they  were 
dead. 

So,  being  used  to  this  trick,  Ann  Gusti  could 
do  it  just  as  well  with  everybody  watching  her 


The  thinnest  living  skeleton. 

as  she  could  out  in  the  field  when  some  bird  or 
little  animal  came  too  near. 

In  the  cage  to  the  right  of  Ann  Gusti  was  the 
" Thinnest  Living  Skeleton,"  whose  body  looked 
like  one  little  twig  and  her  six  thin  legs  like  six 
others.  She  was  a  sort  of  distant  cousin  to  Carol 
and  Gryl,  but  you  would  never  think  it  to  look 
at  her.  They  both  had  large  thick  strong  jump- 
ing hind-legs  to  hop  with,  and  if  the  "  skeleton  " 

125 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

had  ever  tried  to  hop,  it  would  have  made  any- 
body laugh  to  see  her.  But  I  don't  think  she  ever 
tried. 

As  she  had  no  wings  or  wing-covers  whatever, 
she  could  n't  fly  like  Carol  and  she  could  n't  fid- 
dle like  Gryl. 

In  fact,  there  was  n't  much  she  could  do  but 
look  like  a  twig.  But  she  did  that  perfectly!  If 
a  person  can  do  just  one  thing  very  well  indeed, 
she  gets  along  pretty  well  in  this  world.  The 
"  skeleton  "  had  always  been  in  a  little  oak  tree 
before  she  came  to  the  circus;  and  if  you  had 
tried  to  see  her  there,  you  would  have  found  out 
that  she  could  hide  herself  in  plain  sight  on  an 
oak-branch  as  well  as  Carol  could  hide  herself  in 
plain  sight  on  the  sand.  Maybe  that's  how  she 
came  to  look  so  like  a  twig  that  people  call  her 
a  "  walking-stick." 

In  the  cage  to  the  left  of  Ann  Gusti  was  a 
beetle  who  had  a  queer  spring  on  the  under  side 
of  his  body;  and  whenever  he  found  himself  on 
his  back,  he  had  the  funniest  way  of  getting  on 
his  feet  you  ever  thought  of.  He  would  jerk  his 

126 


ANN  GUSTTS  CIRCUS 


spring  with  a  " click"  sound,  and  that  would 
throw  him  way  up  in  the  air,  and  then  he  would 
come  down  right-side  up.  If  he  did  n't  do  it  the 
first  time  trying,  he  would  keep  on 
clicking  and  jumping  until  he  did. 

So  altogether  Ann  Gusti's  side-show 
pleased  the  children  and  did  the  little 
animals  no  harm. 

By  the  next  day,  though,  she  be- 
came tired  of  her  cage  and  tried  her 
best  to  get  out.  She  climbed  up  to 
the  top  and  clung  with  her  six  little 
feet  at  the  crack,  and  pushed  and  had  a  queer 
poked  and  bumped  with  her  head,  try-  spring. 
ing  to  find  a  place  where  she  could  squeeze 
through.  If  Jack  lifted  the  top,  she  would  stop 
just  where  she  was  as  if  frightened,  and  keep 
still  without  moving  a  feeler  or  toe.  When  the 
cover  was  put  down,  she  would  wait  a  long  time, 
and  then  begin  all  over  again,  creeping  round 
and  round  and  round  the  top  of  the  cage,  cling- 
ing at  the  crack  with  her  feet,  and  pushing, 
pushing,  pushing,  with  her  hard  little  head. 

127 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

That  made  both  Jack  and  Jane  so  sorry  for 
her  that  they  gave  her  back  to  Uncle  David,  who 
took  her  home  to  her  own  wide  meadow.  And 
the  last  that  was  ever  known  of  Ann  Gusti,  she 
had  the  great  big  beautiful  sky  for  a  circus-tent, 
and  the  little  clown  was  chewing  a  buttercup- 
leaf  whenever  she  felt  hungry. 


X 

GRYL,  THE  LITTLE  BLACK  MINSTREL 

A  LITTLE  bird  with  a  blue  back  was  going  in 
and  out  of  a  round  hole  in  an  old  tree  near  the 
river.  Now  and  then  he  would  stop  and  say 
"Tru-i-lee,  tru-i-lee,"  very  softly  to  his  mate. 
He  sang  as  if  he  liked  the  hole,  and  perhaps  he 
did;  for  was  this  not  the  place  where  he  and  his 
mate  had  nested  in  the  spring?  And  now,  before 
they  flew  far  off  to  the  south,  had  he  not  come 
back  again  to  sit  near  the  old  doorway  and  sing 
to  her? 

One  tree  on  the  river-bank  was  red  and  one 
was  yellow,  for  it  was  an  October  day  and  their 
leaves  were  no  longer  green.  Under  them  the 
quiet  water  seemed  red  and  yellow,  too,  as  if  a 
big  looking-glass  lay  there  for  the  trees  to  see 
themselves  in. 

With  a  bluebird  singing  his  good-bye  song 
and  the  gay  leaves  making  bright  places  in  the 
water,  it  was  a  day  to  be  happy  in. 

129 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 


There  he  sat,  the  happy  little  fellow. 

And  Gryl  Cricket  was  happy,  even  though  he 
did  not  listen  to  the  bird  or  look  at  the  river. 
He  was  singing,  too,  the  only  song  he  knew.  A 
funny  sort  of  song  it  was,  with  all  the  \vords  in 
the  verse  alike,  and  every  verse  just  like  the  one 
before,  and  not  much  change  in  the  tune.  But 
although  it  was  the  same  music  over  and  over 
again,  it  had  different  sounds  for  all  that.  When 
near  by,  it  was  something  like  "Gr-gryl-1,  gr- 
gryl-1,  gr-gryl-1,"  tinkled  oh,  so  quickly  on  a 
tiny  bell;  and  when  it  was  far  off,  it  was  more 
like  "Cri-cri-cri-cri." 

130 


GRYL,  THE  BLACK  MINSTREL 

Whether  far  or  near,  it  was  very  good  music 
for  an  October  day.  Any  way,  Gryl  liked  to  make 
it:  you  may  be  sure  of  that,  for  he  kept  at  it,  off 
and  on,  all  the  warm  sunny  part  of  the  day. 
And  in  the  summer,  before  the  nights  were  so 
cool,  he  sang  in  the  dark,  too. 

With  so  much  singing  day  after  day,  does  his 
little  black  throat  ache  and  his  voice  grow  hoarse? 

Not  a  bit  of  it;  for  Gryl's  music-box  is  not  like 
yours  and  the  birds'.  It  is  not  in  his  throat  at 
all!  He  wears  a  fiddle  on  his  back  and  sings,  not 
through  his  throat,  but  with  his  wings. 

There  he  sat,  the  happy  little  fellow,  before  his 
open  door,  and  fiddled.  He  lifted  two  wings  and 
rubbed  them  together  so  that  the  row  of  tiny 
hard  ridges  on  the  under  side  of  his  right  wing 
hit  against  the  hard  wrinkles  on  the  upper  side 
of  his  left  wing,  and  that  is  the  way  he  made 
music  for  himself. 

His  "  Cri-cri-cri "  just  now  seemed  to  be  a 
song  of  thankfulness,  as  hungry  people  often  say 
" grace"  before  they  eat.  Gryl  had  been  too 
cold  to  get  up  for  his  breakfast,  and  now  it  was 

131 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

dinner-time  and  he  was  sitting  before  a  feast  and 
fiddling  as  he  ate.  "  I  have  meat  and  I  can  eat," 
he  seemed  to  be  saying  over  and  over  to  himself. 

If  he  was  glad,  it  was  no  wonder;  he  had  found, 
when  he  went  hunting,  a  nice  fresh  leg  of  grass- 
hopper which  a  blackbird  had  dropped  near 
his  home.  Now  Gryl  liked  a  grasshopper-leg 
as  surely  as  you  like  a  turkey's  drumstick 
for  Thanksgiving  dinner.  So  he  munched  and 
munched  all  by  himself,  and  fiddled  as  he  ate. 

Sometimes  at  parties,  or  in  lunch-rooms,  we 
have  someone  play  to  us  during  dinner.  But  we 
have  to  hire  our  meal-time  music.  A  man  can 
not  play  a  fiddle  on  his  back  and  eat  at  the  same 
time.  Funny  little  Gryl  could  do  just  that,  and 
it  would  make  you  laugh  right  out  loud  to  see 
him  do  it. 

The  longer  Gryl  nibbled  and  fiddled,  the  more 
restless  Taffy  grew.  Taffy  Cricket,  I  forgot  to 
say,  was  Gryl's  neighbor,  and  he  lived  so  near 
that  he  could  smell  Gryl's  marrow-bone;  and, 
like  his  namesake  in  the  old  verse,  Taffy  was  a 
thief. 

132 


Gryl  and  Taffy. 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Perhaps  if  Taffy's  home  had  been  where  the 
sun  warmed  it  earlier  than  it  did  GryPs,  Taffy 
would  have  wakened  in  time  to  find  the  bone 
first.  But  as  it  was,  he  had  been  too  cold  and  lazy 
to  start  out  until  Gryl  was  half  through  his 
dinner.  And  the  more  he  smelled  that  bone,  the 
more  he  wanted  it.  So  before  long  he  crept  out 
from  under  the  slanting  stone  that  covered  his 
cave,  and  slipped  very  quietly  in  under  the  old 
piece  of  flat  tin  that  made  a  roof  for  GryPs  din- 
ing-room. 

While  Gryl  was  making  a  merry,  noisy  tune 
over  his  meal,  could  Taffy  come  very  softly  and 
join  the  feast? 

He  tried,  and  what  happened  to  him  was 
something  like  what  would  happen  to  you  if  you 
tried  to  take  away  a  dog's  bone.  For  wherever 
a  dog  has  found  his  bone,  he  feels  very,  very  sure, 
in  his  own  mind,  that  it  belongs  to  him,  and  no 
one  except  his  master  must  go  near  him  \vhile 
he  is  eating.  If  we  do,  and  get  hurt,  then  it  is 
our  own  fault  and  \ve  must  not  blame  the  dog. 

Perhaps  Gryl  felt  that  way,  for  he  ran  right 

134 


GRYL,  THE  BLACK  MINSTREL 

up  to  Taffy  and  scared  him  off.  The  funny  part 
of  it  was  that  he  did  n't  stop  fiddling  while  he 
ran!  He  just  lifted  his  wings  higher  and  fiddled 
louder,  and  this  time  he  was  not  playing  gently, 
"  I  have  meat  and  I  can  eat,"  to  himself:  he  was 
playing  a  threat  to  Taffy  which  meant,  "  Taffy 
Cricket  this  is  my  bone.  I  hunted  for  it.  I  found 
it.  I  brought  it  home.  You  lazy  thing,  you  just 
go  out  and  hunt  for  your  own  dinner.  Go  away! 
Go  away!  Go  away!  r' 

Taffy  must  have  understood  him,  even  though 
what  he  said  sounded  like ' l  cre-ek,  cre-ek,  cre-ek ! ' ' 
He  understood  so  well  that  he  did  not  even  stop 
to  turn  round.  He  just  stepped  out  backward 
and  left  Gryl,  as  he  had  found  him,  fiddling  over 
his  dinner. 

When  Gryl  had  eaten  plenty  of  food,  he  washed 
one  of  his  front  feet  by  putting  it  into  his  mouth. 
Then  he  pulled  one  of  his  long  feelers  down  with 
his  foot,  until  he  could  wash  that,  too.  After 
that  he  brushed  his  shiny  black  sides  with  his 
hind-legs;  for  this  was  GryPs  wedding-day  and 
of  course  he  must  be  clean  as  well  as  happy. 

135 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

In  the  afternoon  he  went  for  a  walk  in  the 
sunshine.  He  was  merry  as  could  be,  except  when 
a  man  happened  to  come  that  way  and  shake 
the  ground  with  his  heavy  foot.  Then  Gryl 
stopped  fiddling  and  sat  so  still  that  even  his 
feelers  did  not  move.  He  stayed  still  a  long,  long 
time,  and  then  crept  off  under  some  fallen  leaves, 
to  hide  until  the  steps  passed  far  away.  He  could 
never  fly  even  when  danger  was  near.  His  front 
wings  were  a  fiddle  and  his  hind  ones  weak,  little 
folded  things  that  were  too  feeble  to  carry  him 
an  inch.  But  he  knew  how  to  slip  away  and  hide, 
as  you  would  find  if  you  tried  to  catch  him  for 
a  pet. 

Toward  night  he  played  a  soft  tune  to  Lucy 
Cricket,  who  lived  under  a  bit  of  bark  near  his 
own  little  dug-out. 

Now  Lucy  was  black  as  a  piece  of  coal,  and 
her  head  was  so  bald  and  shiny  that  not  a  hair 
could  be  seen  on  it  anywhere,  and  she  was  dumb. 

But  she  was  not  deaf,  and  she  could  hear  Gryl's 
song  and  liked  it.  And  what  do  you  suppose  she 
did?  Do  you  think  she  painted  her  little  black 

136 


GRYL,  THE  BLACK  MINSTREL 

cheeks  and  put  on  a  wig?  Oh,  no;  she  was  an 
honest  cricket  and  went  out  to  her  mate  just  as 
she  was.  As  he  was  black  as  a  piece  of  coal,  too, 


Lucy  and  Gryl  Cricket. 

and  just  as  bald  as  she  was,  they  really  looked 
very  much  alike,  except  that  her  wings  had  no 
fiddles,  and  he  had  no  long  slender  tail,  but  only 
two  tail-feathers. 

Well,  Gryl  went  right  on  fiddling,  and  this 
time  it  was  their  wedding  march.  For  a  wedding 
supper  they  had  a  wild-lettuce  salad,  with  some 
apple-sauce  for  dessert;  for  there  was  a  wild- 

137 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

apple  tree  on  the  bank,  and  the  apples  that  had 
dropped  down  were  nice  and  soft. 

Then  Lucy  went  back  to  her  cave  under  the 
bark  and  Gryl  found  his  way  to  his  own  little 
dug-out. 

After  all,  he  did  not  need  any  one  to  help  him 
about  his  meals.  He  rather  liked  going  out  to 
hunt  for  them  himself.  And  he  needed  no  one  to 
show  him  how  to  finish  his  dug-out.  He  knew 
just  how  to  pick  up  the  hard  little  bit  of  dirt  or 
stone  in  his  mouth  and  carry  it  off  out  of  the 
way,  and  just  how  to  scratch  out  the  soft  places 
with  his  head  and  feet. 

It  was  well  that  he  felt  that  way  about  it,  for 
Lucy  was  far  too  busy  with  her  owrn  task  to  help 
Gryl  or  any  one  else.  It  took  her  all  her  time  for 
a  while  to  take  care  of  her  eggs.  For  these  must 
be  put  down  so  that  they  would  keep  all  winter. 

What  better  could  she  do  with  them  than 
trust  them  to  good  old  Mother  Earth,  who 
broods  over  the  tiniest  seeds  that  are  left  in  her 
care?  And  Lucy's  eggs  were  something  like  wee 
seeds.  She  planted  them  in  the  earth  with  the 


GRYL,  THE   BLACK  MINSTREL 

long  slender  back  part  of  her  body,  that  looked 
like  a  tail  but  was  really  a  tool  to  put  eggs  into 
the  ground  with. 

So  while  Lucy  tended  her  eggs  like  a  good  little 
mother,  Gryl  finished  his  dug-out,  making  it 
deeper  and  deeper,  until  the  days  grew  very  cold 
and  he  fell  asleep  in  his  bedroom  in  the  same 
earth  that  sheltered  Lucy's  eggs. 

One  day,  a  long  time  after  that,  the  trees, 
which  had  dropped  their  red  and  yellow  leaves 
on  the  river-bank,  unfolded  some  very  fresh  green 
ones.  A  bird  with  a  blue  back,  who  had  flown 
far,  far  to  the  south,  and  north  again,  was  hop- 
ping in  and  out  of  the  hole  in  the  old  tree  near 
by  and  whispering  "Tru-i-lee,  tru-i-lee"  sweetly 
to  his  mate. 

It  was  spring,  and  time  for  Gryl  to  waken  from 
his  long  nap  and  begin  fiddling  again.  For  there 
are  always  some  crickets  to  welcome  the  spring  - 
their  songs  do  not  belong  just  to  the  summer 
and  fall. 

As  Gryl  sat  and  fiddled  before  his  open  door, 
his  little  sons  and  daughters  hatched  in  their 

139 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

egg-shells  and  climbed  up  out  of  the  ground. 

They  were  wee  midgets  who  looked  much  like 
old  Daddy  Gryl,  with  their  bald  black  heads  and 
hopping  hind-legs.  For  a  cricket  is  a  cricket  all 
the  days  of  his  life  except  while  he  is  an  egg.  He 
is  n't  one  thing  first  and  then  another  after- 
ward, like  a  caterpillar  turning  into  a  butterfly. 

All  a  small  cricket  has  to  change  to  is  a  larger 
cricket.  So  there  was  not  a  great  deal  of  differ- 
ence between  Gryl  and  one  of  his  little  sons  ex- 
cept size  and  wings.  For  a  baby  cricket  is  like 
all  other  baby  insects,  who  must  eat  and  grow 
up  before  they  can  have  any  wings. 

While  he  is  growing,  he  must  throw  off  his 
little  black  skin  when  it  gets  too  tight,  and  from 
time  to  time  his  \ying-pads  will  get  bigger.  Then, 
when  he  changes  his  skin  the  last  time,  there  will 
be  wings  on  his  back  instead  of  pads  —  not  wings 
to  fly  with,  but  to  fiddle  with. 

So,  long  before  the  bluebird  will  come  to  say 
good-bye  to  his  nest  next  October,  Daddy  Gryl's 
sons  will  be  fiddling  near  their  open  doors,  mer- 
rily, oh  merrily,  as  crickets  should. 


XI 
LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 

THE  hazelnut  bushes  had  dropped  their  leaves. 
They  were  dry  brown  leaves  now,  that  rustled 
when  the  boys  and  girls  waded  through  them; 
and  when  the  wind  lifted  them  up  and  made 
them  dance,  they  flew  here  and  there  as  if  they 
were  merry. 

But  there  was  one  leaf  that  did  not  dance  with 
the  others.  It  stayed  still,  for  it  was  \vrapped 
tightly  about  Luna's  little  silk-room.  Luna  had 
papered  the  outside  of  her  room  with  the  leaf 
before  she  spun  the  wall  too  thick  to  reach 
through.  Now  you  can  tell  from  that  that  Lun?, 
was  a  caterpillar;  because  what  else  could  it  be 
that  would  spin  a  room  of  silk? 

Yes,  Luna  had  been  a  caterpillar  once  upon  a 
time  in  her  spinning  days  —  a  big  one,  too,  and 
a  pretty  one,  a  very,  very  pretty  one.  But  after 
she  had  finished  making  her  little  home  that  had 
just  one  room  in  it,  she  rested  a  while  and  then 

141 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

she  stopped  being  a  caterpillar.  It  happened 
this  way.  Her  last  caterpillar  clothes  ripped 
down  a  back  seam  just  behind  her  head,  and  her 
caterpillar  skull  cracked  open  like  a  nut.  And 


Luna  had  been  a  caterpillar  once  upon  a  time,  and  a  pretty  one. 

the  pale  little  body  that  lay  inside  was  not  a 
caterpillar  any  more.  No,  Luna  was  a  pupa  now, 
and  grew  darker  and  darker  until  she  was  brown 
all  over.  There  was  nothing  for  her  to  do  but  to 
sleep,  for  her  one  room  was  a  bedroom,  and  she 
had  locked  herself  in  until  spring. 

142 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


There  was  no  pantry  in  her  little  house,  and 
she  could  not  eat.  Not  one  crumb  of  food  and 
not  one  drop  of  drink  was  she  to  have  all  winter. 
But  she  was  so  plump  that  we  need  not  feel  sorry 
for  her,  for  she  had  spent  all  her  life  in  a  pantry 
until  she  made  her  bedroom,  and  had  eaten 
enough  to  last  her  a  long,  long  time.  Her  pantry 
had  been  an  oak  tree,  and  the  shelves  were  the 
oak-leaves,  and  she  ate  up  some  of  the  shelves! 

Before  she  was  a  caterpillar  she  was  a  white 
egg;  and  her  mother,  who  was  very  beautiful  in- 
deed, had  put  this  white  egg  with  some  others 
on  top  of  one  of  the  oak-leaf  shelves.  This  made 
it  handy  for  Luna  when  she  nibbled  a  hole  in  the 
egg-shell  and  poked  her  little  head  out.  What 
more  could  she  want  than  to  be  hatched  in  a 
pantry  with  so  much  food  in  it  that  she  could 
eat  whenever  she  felt  hungry?  And  an  oak  pan- 
try, too!  She  would  n't  have  minded  if  she  had 
hatched  in  a  birch  or  walnut  pantry,  but  there 
was  nothing  she  liked  better  than  oak.  Indeed, 
she  liked  an  oak-leaf  as  well  as  a  blue  jay  or  a 
squirrel  likes  an  acorn — maybe  even  better. 

143 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

So  of  course  she  ate  and  ate,  and  I  think  she 
would  have  eaten  for  sixty  days  without  stop- 
ping, except  for  one  thing.  That  one  thing  was 
her  skin.  It  was  a  funny  sort  of  skin  to  have.  It 
could  stretch  and  grow  for  about  a  week,  and  then 
it  would  stop.  Whenever  Luna's  skin  stopped 
stretching  she  had  to  stop  eating.  As  soon  as 
this  happened,  she  would  spin  a  thin  silk  mat 
all  spread  out  on  the  leaf,  and  tangle  the  little 
hooks  on  her  ten  fat  clinging  feet  in  it,  and  wait. 
While  she  waited  she  would  lift  her  head  and 
put  her  six  thin  front-legs  together,  so  that  she 
looked  as  if  she  were  asking  for  something. 

What  she  needed  was  a  new  skin  that  would 
stretch  farther,  and  a  new  head  so  that  she  could 
eat  bigger  slices  of  good  oak-leaves. 

And  sure  enough  she  was  going  to  have  them 
both!  For  there  behind  her  head  that  was  too 
little  for  her,  there  was  a  place  where  her  neck 
looked  swollen.  That  was  because  a  new  head 
was  growing  inside  her  old  tight  skin;  and  as  it 
grew,  it  pushed  the  little  old  skull  off  until  it 
looked  something  like  the  nose-bags  men  put  on 

144 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


their  horses  when  they  feed  them  away  from 
home,  where  there  is  no  food-box. 

And  at  last  her  bigger  new  head  inside  her 
skin  pushed  the  little  old  skull  so  far  that  rip, 
rip  went  the  skin  right  round  her  collar,  and  off 
dropped  the  little  old  skull  and  out  popped  her 
new  head!  Then  she  crept  out  of  the  old  tight 
skin  through  the  collar-hole;  and  there  she  was 
as  good  as  new,  with  a  new  suit  of  skin  that 
would  stretch  for  about  a  week.  So  she  could 
eat  another  good  long  meal. 

That  was  the  way  she  ate  and  grew,  and  that 
was  the  way  she  changed  her  skin-dress.  And 
every  dress  she  had  was  a  little  different  from  the 
one  she  had  before.  They  were  all  pretty  dresses, 
and  all  green  ones  that  did  not  show  much  when 
she  was  clinging  to  her  green  pantry  shelves. 
The  tips  of  her  legs  were  reddish  brown,  and  so 
was  her  mouth.  She  had  some  tiny  red  dots 
and  some  yellow  ones  on  her  dress,  and  some 
blue  ones.  There  was  a  yellow  line  along  each 
side  and  some  in  other  places.  These  colors  made 
her  all  the  prettier,  but  they  did  not  show  very 

145 


The  moonbeams  could  jind  nothing  lovelier  than  Luna. 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


far  away,  and  she  really  looked  nearly  as  green  as 
the  leaves  she  ate. 

When  she  had  on  her  last  suit  of  skin,  she 
grew  to  be  three  inches  long;  and  when  she  was 
about  sixty  days  old,  she  left  the  oak  pantry  for 
the  first  time  in  her  life.  And  she  was  never 
going  back.  Plenty  of  good  fresh  leaves  lay  all 
about  her  on  every  side;  but  greedy  as  she  had 
been  all  her  growing  days,  she  seemed  to  know 
when  she  had  had  enough  and  did  not  stop  to 
take  another  bite.  She  walked  along  the  branch 
until  she  came  to  the  trunk  of  the  tree,  and  then 
down  she  crept  head  first  —  way  to  the  ground. 
Then  she  wandered  off  for  her  very  first  walk  on 
the  ground. 

It  was  her  very  last  one,  too;  for  by  the  time 
she  had  reached  a  hazelnut  bush  she  felt  like 
spinning.  It  \vas  more  than  a  thin  mat  to  rest 
on,  while  she  changed  her  dress,  that  she  felt  like 
making.  There  was  a  leaf  near  by  and  she  felt 
like  spinning  this  about  her  with  silk  and  mak- 
ing her  cocoon  inside  it.  Cocoon  is  the  name  of 
her  bedroom. 

147 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

The  silk  she  used  dripped  out  of  a  tube  near 
her  under-lip.  It  was  wet  and  sticky  at  first,  but 
as  soon  as  the  air  touched  it,  it  hardened  into  a 
fine  thread.  She  spun  these  threads  in  little 
loops  by  swinging  her  head  from  side  to  side, 
and  it  took  more  loops  than  you  can  count  to 
make  enough  to  cover  her  all  up,  though  the 
more  she  spun  the  shorter  she  grew.  She  seemed 
to  shrink  as  she  worked;  and  by  the  time  the 
cocoon  was  done,  it  did  not  have  to  be  more  than 
an  inch  and  a  half  to  hold  her. 

That  is  how  she  came  to  be  all  snugly  tucked 
up  in  a  silk  cocoon  with  a  leaf  wrapped  about 
it.  Then  she  changed  to  a  little  pupa  inside,  as 
brown  as  the  hazelnuts  the  children  were  hunting. 

For  it  was  Thanksgiving  time,  and  Jack  and 
Jane  were  nutting  in  Uncle  David's  woods.  But 
Luna  did  not  hear  them  as  they  laughed  and 
shouted  and  waded  through  the  dry  leaves,  any 
more  than  she  heard  the  big  black  birds  calling 
"Caw!  caw!"  or  the  other  big  bird  with  a  jacket 
almost  as  blue  as  the  sky,  scream  at  the  top  of 
his  lungs  that  his  name  was  "Jay!  Ja-ay!"  The 

148 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


woods  might  ring  with  noises,  but  Luna  slept 
on.  Boys  and  girls  might  have  turkey  baked 
brown  and  cranberries  cooked  to  a  beautiful  red 
jelly  and  candy  with  hazelnuts  in  it  for  their 
Thanksgiving  dinner.  What  did  Luna  care  about 
that?  She  had  eaten  her  fill  long  ago.  The  only 
Thanksgiving  she  needed  was  to  sleep  safely  in 
her  cocoon.  That  is  how  she  spent  the  day. 
Alone  and  asleep!  Sometimes  she  wiggled  and 
turned  in  her  bed,  but  she  did  not  waken.  She 
would  wait  until  Spring  called  her,  and  then  her 
long,  long  night  would  be  over. 

Then  she  would  break  her  brown  pupa  case 
and  wet  her  cocoon  with  something  that  would 
soften  the  hard  silk  so  that  she  could  break  her 
way  through,  and  out  she  would  come  —  out  of 
her  bedroom  into  the  open  world  of  sunshine  and 
moonlight! 

At  first  her  wings  would  be  tiny  limp  flaps, 
and  they  would  grow  bigger  and  bigger  and  big- 
ger until  it  would  take  a  ruler  five  inches  long  to 
reach  across  them  when  they  were  spread.  And 
they  would  grow  so  fast  you  could  see  them  do  it! 

149 


She  -izould  Jlj  in  the  moonlight. 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


Their  color  would  be  the  loveliest  pale  green 
there  is  in  the  world.  Near  the  middle  of  each 
one  there  would  be  a  tiny  clear  place,  like  a  wee 
window  with  a  pretty  frame  of  white,  black,  and 
red.  Across  the  front  edge  of  the  front  wings 
would  be  a  border  of  purple,  and  the  hind  wings 
would  each  end  in  a  long  part  like  a  tail. 

Luna's  body  lying  between  the  wings  would 
be  covered  by  beautiful  white  fluffy  scales,  the 
whitest  white  that  ever  was  seen  —  whiter  even 
than  the  feathers  on  a  white  dove!  Upon  her 
head  would  wave  two  pale  brown  plumes.  There 
she  would  be  next  summer  —  a  moth  so  lovely 
that  you  would  not  want  to  touch  her,  but  just 
look  and  look  and  look. 

What  would  she  do,  this  wonderful  green  and 
white  and  purple  moth  who  had  been  a  plump, 
brown  sleeping  pupa  before  that,  and  a  pretty, 
growing  caterpillar,  green  as  an  oak-leaf,  before 
that,  and  a  white  egg  first  of  all? 

She  would  fly  in  the  woodland,  but  not  by 
day.  She  was  a  moon  moth  and  would  wait  for 
night  to  come. 

151 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

By  night  she  would  fly,  and  where,  do  you 
think?  To  the  flowers  with  deep  cups,  and  un- 
coil her  long  tongue  to  sip  up  the  sweet  drops 
at  the  bottom?  Oh,  no.  That  is  what  many 
moths  would  do,  but  Luna  had  no  tongue  and 
could  not  drink.  That  is  the  way  Lunas  are 
made.  They  eat,  when  they  are  caterpillars, 
enough  to  last  them  while  they  sleep  the  sleep 
of  change.  All  moths  are  like  that.  But  Luna's 
caterpillar  food  lasts  her  all  her  life,  though 
many  other  moths  sip  from  flowers  at  night  as 
butterflies  do  by  day. 

No,  Luna  would  not  visit  the  blossoms  that 
hold  up  their  sweet-smelling  cups.  She  \vould  fly 
-have  you  guessed  where? 

Yes,  she  would  fly  in  the  moonlight. 

She  would  be  beautiful  enough  to  be  a  fairy, 
with  her  snowy  robe  and  her  pale  green  wings. 
You  could  call  her  a  fairy  princess  if  you  liked, 
and  say  that  her  name  is  Princess  Luna.  And 
the  prince  would  come  to  fly  near  her  in  the 
moonlight .  Be  sure  of  that  —  Prince  Luna  would 
be  there,  too.  He  would  be  dressed  like  the  prin- 

152 


LUNA'S  THANKSGIVING 


cess,  with  a  white  robe  and  fair  green  wings,  and 
the  plumes  on  his  head  would  be  even  larger  than 
hers.  The  moonbeams  seeking  through  all  the 


Later  there  must  be  cocoons  wrapped  in  fallen  leaves. 

woods  could  find  nothing  lovelier  than  the  Prince 
and  Princess  Luna. 

There  would  be  music  for  the  night-time.  In 
the  fields  near  by,  a  black  cricket  would  be  fid- 
dling joyfully.  Way,  way  off,  a  night  bird  would 
call.  The  brook  would  make  a  sweet  tune  as  it 
ran  over  the  stones  in  its  path.  And  overhead 
the  oak-leaves  would  be  whispering. 

Would  they  call  the  princess,  do  you  think? 

153 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO  SCIENCE 

Or  was  there  a  fragrance  in  the  whispering  leaves 
that  drew  her  to  them?  In  some  strange  way  the 
oak  would  tell  her  to  come,  and  she  would  fly 
back  to  the  tree  she  left  so  many  months  before. 
There  upon  the  leaves  she  would  put  her  eggs, 
her  most  precious  gift  to  the  world;  and  they 
would  gleam  in  the  moonlight  like  fairy  pearls. 
She  had  been  like  one  of  them  herself  a  year 
before.  And  if,  in  the  year  to  follow,  there  are  to 
be  Prince  and  Princess  Lunas  floating  among  the 
moonbeams,  there  must  be  pearly  eggs  upon  the 
oak-leaves,  just  as  later  there  must  be  cocoons 
wrapped  in  fallen  leaves,  each  with  a  pupa  in  it 
brown  as  a  nut  at  Thanksgiving  time. 


XII 
KETI  ABBOT 

THE  LITTLEST  CHRISTMAS  GUEST 

KETI  ABBOT  lived  all  alone  in  a  tiny  log  cabin 
in  a  holly  tree.  Sometimes  a  wonderful  cardinal 
bird  sat  on  the  branches  near  him  and  sang,  his 
gay  feathers  looking  very  pretty  against  the 
glossy  green  leaves;  for  you  know  how  becoming 
red  is  to  a  holly  twig. 

Now  Keti's  father  and  mother  had  never  kept 
house  in  the  log  cabin  where  he  lived,  and  he 
had  never  seen  either  of  them.  Mrs.  Abbot  had 
left  his  egg,  with  a  lot  of  others,  in  her  own  log 
cabin  on  a  holly  branch;  and  that  was  about  all 
she  had  ever  been  able  to  do  for  her  son.  But  you 
must  not  be  sorry  for  the  little  orphan,  for  from 
the  moment  he  hatched  Keti  was  able  to  take 
care  of  himself.  He  had,  in  fact,  never  known  an 
unhappy  hour.  He  had  everything  he  needed - 
a  snug  little  home  and  plenty  of  food;  and  he 
never  would  have  been  lonesome  even  if  the 
cardinal  bird  had  not  come  there  at  all.  But  as 

155 


Kcti  lin-d  all  alone  in  a  tiny  log  cabin. 


KETI  ABBOT 


this  singer  was  not  making  sweet  music  to  give 
him  joy,  the  feelings  of  the  bird  were  not  hurt 
when  Keti  did  not  listen  to  him. 

Keti  was  so  busy  getting  his  meals  and  build- 
ing his  log  cabin  that  little  else  mattered  to  him, 
just  so  he  was  let  alone  as  his  father  and  mother 
had  left  him.  It  seems  strange  to  think  of  that 
little  chap  finding  food  for  himself  from  the  time 
he  was  a  baby  less  than  a  day  old  and  ready  for 
his  first  bite.  Yet  very  soon  after  he  had  poked 
his  head  out  of  the  egg-shell,  he  had  crept  off 
and  fed  himself  on  a  nice  crisp  holly-leaf  salad. 
It  agreed  with  him  better  than  malted  milk 
would  have  done,  which  you  may  be  very  sure 
was  the  reason  Mrs.  Abbot  had  placed  her  pre- 
cious eggs  where  she  did.  If  her  son  was  to  be 
left  to  find  his  own  food,  she  would  at  least  see 
to  it  that  he  was  put  where  he  would  not  starve 
for  lack  of  the  proper  kind. 

That  was  all  very  well  so  far  as  his  meals  went; 
but  where  was  the  carpenter  to  be  found  who 
would  make  him  a  snug  cabin?  For,  after  he 
crept  out  of  the  egg-shell,  he  had  no  covering  for 

157 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

his  tender  little  body,  and  no  son  of  the  House 
of  Abbot  would  be  caught  without  just  the  right 
sort  of  shelter  over  his  head.  No,  indeed.  His 
family  for  many,  many  years  back  had  all  had 
tidy  places  of  their  own,  and  it  was  not  to  be 
thought  for  a  moment  that  he  would  get  along 
without  one  as  good  as  any  of  them  had  had. 
He  might  be  fatherless  and  motherless,  and  with 
no  nurse  to  prepare  his  dinner  for  him;  but  home- 
less he  would  not  be.  Never!  And  he  did  n't  sit 
round  waiting  for  that  carpenter,  either.  He 
went  to  work  as  busy  as  a  little  bee  and  made 
his  own  log  cabin.  That  is  what  Keti  did.  Think 
of  it, — with  no  one  to  show  him  how, —  and  he 
a  baby  just  new  in  the  world!  He  started  it  with 
the  tiniest  pieces,  for  he  was  wee  himself  and  did 
not  need  a  big  dwelling;  and  if  you  had  seen  him 
turning  heels  over  head  with  it  in  the  beginning, 
you  might  have  thought  that  he  was  only  play- 
ing a  game  with  a  cunning  little  collar.  But  he 
kept  at  it  until  it  covered  him  all  up,  and  as  fast 
as  he  grew,  he  kept  chopping  more  tiny  holly 
logs  and  making  it  bigger,  to  fit  him. 

158 


KETI  ABBOT 


He  cut  the  wee  twig-logs  as  neatly  as  a  man 
could  cut  huge  ones  with  an  axe,  although  he 
had  no  choppers  to  use  but  his  own  strong  jaws. 
He  placed  them  criss-cross  at  the  ends,  and  fast- 
ened them  together  firmly,  not  with  wooden  pegs 
or  nails,  but  with  silk. 

Now,  no  man  who  is  not  very  rich  has  his  walls 
covered  with  silk,  for  it  costs  a  great  deal  to  buy 
it.  But  it  was  none  too  good  for  Keti  Abbot,  who 
would  have  as  fine  a  cabin  as  his  father  and  his 
grandfather  and  his  great-grandfather  had  had, 
even  if  he  did  have  to  make  every  bit  himself. 
You  will  wonder  where  he  got  his  silk.  It  grew 
in  a  sort  of  pocket  in  his  body  back  of  his  head, 
and  all  he  had  to  do  when  he  was  ready  to  spin 
was  to  pull  it  out  from  an  opening  in  his  mouth 
and  swing  it  back  and  forth  until  he  wove  a  silken 
lining  for  his  little  log  cabin  of  a  nest.  And  no 
one  taught  him  how  to  spin  or  how  to  weave. 
He  just  did  it  all  right  the  first  time  he  tried. 

After  he  had  taken  all  that  pains  with  his 
home,  you  will  not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  he 
liked  it  so  well  that  he  stayed  in  it  night  and  day, 

159 


He  travelled  on  the  under  side 
(if  the  branch  and  let  his  home 
hang  doicn  like  a  bag. 


never  leaving  it  for  a  minute  all  the  fall.  He  no 
more  left  that  little  log  case  of  his  than  a  snail 
would  leave  her  shell,  and  in  some  ways  he  got 
along  in  much  the  same  way  that  a  snail  does. 
When  he  went  walking  about  on  the  highroads 
of  the  holly  branches,  he  stuck  his  head  and 
creeping  feet  out  of  the  open  doorway  and  stepped 
off  -  -  cabin  and  all.  While  he  was  tiny,  he  walked 
on  top  of  the  branch,  with  his  house  straight  up 
in  the  air;  but  after  he  grew  and  his  house  was 
too  heavy  to  hold  that  way,  he  traveled  on  the 

160 


KETI  ABBOT 


under-side  of  the  branch  and  let  his  home  hang 
down  like  a  bag. 

In  this  way  he  would  hunt  here  and  there  about 
the  tree  for  the  best  holly  salads;  and  having  his 
dwelling  handy  by,  he  could  camp  out  wherever 
he  happened  to  be. 

Now  all  these  things  that  Keti  did  without 
any  practice — like  catching  his  own  salad  at  just 
the  right  stage,  and  cutting  holly-twigs  just  the 
right  length,  and  fitting  them  together  at  the 
corners  in  just  the  right  way,  and  binding  them 
into  a  snug  little  home  with  a  silken  lining  which 
he  spun  and  wove  just  right — are  very  wonderful 
things  indeed.  And  perhaps  it  is  not  quite  true 
to  say  that  he  was  not  taught,  because,  after  all, 
he  had  a  better  teacher  than  can  be  found  in  all 
the  colleges  of  the  world,  or  even  in  all  the  kin- 
dergartens. Of  course  that  famous  teacher  is 
Dame  Nature  herself;  and  the  little  chap  got 
along  so  well  with  all  the  hard  lessons  of  his  life 
by  simply  obeying  his  instincts. 

It  is  n't  much  use  to  pucker  up  your  brow  and 
try  to  understand  how  Dame  Nature  led  Keti 

161 


A  LITTLE   GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

from  task  to  task,  and  how  he  could  do  all  these 
things  perfectly  the  first  time  trying.  You  might 
study  about  it  for  more  than  one  hundred  years, 
and  even  then  not  understand  very  well.  It  is 
enough  for  us  to  know  that  Keti  ate  and  cut  and 
builded  and  spun  and  wove;  so  much  any  of 
us  can  find  out  for  ourselves  by  some  day  watch- 
ing one  of  his  kind;  for  Keti  grew  up  in  time,  and 
had  children  and  grandchildren  and  great-grand- 
children; and  although  he  never  saw  any  of  them 
himself,  that  is  no  reason  why  we  cannot  see 
them. 

It  was  during  the  fall,  when  Keti  was  only  a 
few  weeks  old,  that  the  cardinal  bird  sat  in  the 
holly  tree  now  and  then,  adding  his  bright  feath- 
ers to  the  bright  berries  on  the  twig  and  making 
altogether  a  lovely  picture,  though  Keti  never 
noticed  the  gay  visitor  when  he  poked  his  head 
out  of  his  cabin  door. 

Neither  did  he  see  those  little  cousins  of  his 
on  the  trees  near  by,  who  were  making  other 
kinds  of  cases  to  live  in.  They  were  not  such 
pretty  ones  as  Keti's,  and  the  sticks  went  up 

162 


KETI   ABBOT 


Keti's  cousins. 


and  down  on  the  outside  instead  of  crosswise, 
and  perhaps  they  looked  more  like  bags  than 
log  cabins.  Still  they  did  as  well  for  shelter,  and 
were  as  carefully  lined  with  silk.  One  was  as 

163 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

large  as  Keti's  home,  but  the  others  were  much 
smaller.  Each  made  his  house  in  his  own  way,  and 
never  looked  to  see  what  his  cousin  was  doing. 

So  Keti  worked  at  building  and  spinning  day 
by  day;  and  he  walked  here  and  there  along  the 
holly  highroad,  clinging  to  the  under  side  of  the 
branch,  whenever  he  felt  hungry  enough  to  hunt 
up  a  good  fresh  dinner. 

Well,  after  a  while  the  weather  grew  colder  - 
as  cold,  indeed,  as  it  ever  gets  in  the  land  where 
Keti  lived;  for  winter  came  on  and  the  little  fel- 
low, still  less  than  four  months  old,  was  growing 
drowsy.  So  he  fastened  his  cabin  to  a  twig  with 
silk,  and  swung  there  like  a  bird  in  a  nest  while 
he  took  rather  a  long  nap.  He  was  safe  as  a  baby 
oriole  in  his  swinging  house,  which  rocked  in  the 
wind  like  the  cradle  old  Mother  Goose  once  sang 
about. 

And  after  he  had  slept  there  a  number  of 
weeks,  three  children  ran  along  one  day,  looking 
for  holly  branches  to  make  their  house  bright 
at  Christmastime.  Little  Eleanor  spied  Keti's 
cabin  swinging  like  a  cradle  and  said,  "  Oh  my! 

164 


KETI  ABBOT 


oh  my!  oh  me!  oh  my!  Here's  a  tiny  wee  bag  of 
sticks!  I  want  it  for  Dolly  Jane's  very  own  little 
Christmas-tree.  And  there  is  a  holly-berry  stuck 
right  in  the  side  of  it! '; 

So  David  took  out  his  knife  and  cut  off  Keti's 
cabin,  twig  and  all;  and  Eleanor  tucked  it  among 
the  branches  of  a  small  evergreen  tree  which  she 
was  making  ready  for  Dolly  Jane's  Christmas. 

There  Keti  stayed  while  Eleanor  and  David 
and  Phoebe  helped  make  laurel  wreaths,  and 
while  Father  put  up  the  big  red  balls,  and  while 
Mother  hurried  about  making  plum  pudding 
and  wonderful  cakes  and  candies. 

On  December  twenty-fourth  the  three  children 
crept  away  to  bed  very  early,  so  as  to  be  sure  not 
to  be  too  sleepy  to  waken  if  they  should  hear 
anything  that  sounded  like  reindeer  stamping 
on  the  roof  or  any  jingle  that  might  be  sleigh- 
bells;  for  Mother  always  read  to  them,- 

'Twas  the  night  before  Christmas, 
When  all  through  the  house 
Not  a  creature  was  stirring  - 
Not  even  a  mouse,  - 

165 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

and  the  rest  of  those  jolly  verses,  every  Christ- 
mas Eve;  and  every  time  they  could  not  help 
thinking  how  amusing  it  would  be  to  see  for 
themselves  what  really  happened  in  their  own 
home  on  that  night  so  full  of  secrets. 

But  it  was  not  Eleanor  or  David  or  Phoebe 
who  wakened  that  Christmas  Eve.  It  was  little 
Keti,  who  crept  off  Dolly  Jane's  tree  right  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  fun.  The  house  was  so  warm 
that  he  got  over  being  drowsy,  and  suddenly  the 
electric  lights  were  turned  on,  which  made  the 
room  bright  as  day. 

And  there  was  Somebody  putting  glitter  all 
over  the  big  Christmas  tree  until  it  sparkled  like 
stars  and  icicles  and  shiny  snow.  And  there  were 
bright  toy  birds  perched  on  the  twigs,  and  ropes 
of  gayest  red  and  pretty  gold  and  silver  hanging 
all  about  the  spreading  green  branches.  And  all 
around  the  base  of  the  tree  was  a  long  line  of  toy 
animals  like  every  kind  you  can  see  at  the  cir- 
cus. A  little  reindeer  led  them,  and  after  him 
came  all  the  others,  like  a  grand  parade. 

And  Somebody  was  cramming  the  stockings 

166 


KETI  ABBOT 


And  fly  forth  to  seek  out 
a  wingless  mate. 


by  the  fireplace  so  full  of  little  packages  that  they 
were  all  bunched  out.  And  there  were  toys  and 
books  and  bundles  tied  with  red  ribbon  in  piles 
before  the  grate.  And  Somebody  kept  laughing 
softly  and  whispering,  "  Eleanor  will  love  to 
swing  Dolly  Jane  in  this  little  hammock";  and 
"  David  will  make  wonderful  things  with  this  set 
of  carpenter  tools";  and  "Phoebe  will  paint 
pictures  in  this  book  by  the  hour." 

Think  of  it!  All  those  things  happening  while 
the  three  children  slept  soundly,  and  little  Keti 


167 


A  LITTLE  GATEWAY  TO   SCIENCE 

Abbot  awake  all  that  delightful  Christmas  Eve! 
He  even  felt  so  lively  that  he  crept  out  to  the 
nearest  holly-branch  and  nibbled  a  lunch  at 
midnight. 

While  he  was  doing  this,  Somebody  saw  him 
creeping  about  and  chuckled,  and  then  shook  a 
finger  at  him  and  called  him  a  long  name  that 
sounded  like  talking  in  Latin.  '  Oiketicus  ab- 
botii,"  Somebody  whispered,  "don't  tell  what 
you  have  seen  to-night.  It's  a  secret,  you  know." 

And  sure  enough,  Keti,  the  little  Christmas 
guest  of  Dolly  Jane,  never  told  a  soul  about 
what  went  on  that  gay  night,  although  he  crept 
from  place  to  place  and  feasted  during  the  twelve 
days  before  the  holly,  with  him  on  it,  was  taken 
out-doors  again.  Then  he  went  to  sleep  until 
warm  weather  came,  and  wakened  him  to  eat  and 
grow  and  change  into  a  little  winged  creature 
like  his  father,  and  fly  forth  to  seek  out  a  wing- 
less mate  in  a  log  cabin  like  the  one  his  mother 
had  once  lived  in. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  367128    4 


